Drug WarRant

Toronto:

Fareed Ahamad, 41, was charged with trafficking in November, 2001, even though the drug transaction was not his idea, he did not make any money and he believed he was helping a disabled man who appeared to be in pain.

An undercover cop, using a wheelchair for disguise, asks someone on the street to buy him some drugs. The good samaritan, guilty at most of poor judgment, goes into a restaurant and purchases $20 of crack for the apparantly challenged man, and is arrested for his trouble.
Fortunately, last week the judge threw out the charges. Unfortunately, it took two years for the stupid cop trick to be corrected.

Yes, I’ve given this post an alarmist heading, but it is deserved…

Gun-Wielding Cops Conduct Drug Sweep At School: Drug Sweep Finds No Drugs (video available at this link)

Surveillance video from Stratford High School in Goose Creek shows 14 officers, some with guns drawn, ordering students to lie the ground as police searched for marijuana. Students who didn’t comply with the orders quickly enough were reportedly handcuffed.

Police didn’t find any criminals in the armed sweep, but they say search dogs smelled drugs on a dozen backpacks.

Another report:

“Armed police stormed a high school and ordered children to the floor at gunpoint so they could conduct a drugs search, it emerged today.

Officers ran into the South Carolina school, screaming at pupils to lie face down, before rifling through their bags.

No evidence that a crime had been committed. The search was for marijuana. Guns were drawn. Students were put in real jeopardy of their lives. Everyone involved in this terrorist act should be fired, at the very least.
There’s something wrong in this country, when pot smokers are accused of aiding terrorists, and actions like this one are considered acceptable by the government.
More on this at Keith Gottschalk’s Talk Radio Refugee, Crescat Sententia, RandomActOfKindess, TalkLeft, and others.
Update: State investigating high school drug sweep

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. – State police are investigating why officers charged into a crowded high school hallway with guns drawn in a drug sweep.

Charleston-area prosecutor Ralph Hoisington asked the State Law Enforcement Division to look into possible police misconduct in the operation….

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with law enforcement addressing a problem in a high school, but I have serious concerns about the need for restraining students and drawing weapons,” Hoisington said. “I don’t want to send my child to a school and find out guns are drawn on them. I certainly don’t want them hogtied as part of a sweeping investigation.”…

Graham Boyd, director of the drug policy project for the American Civil Liberties Union, says the search was illegal. “You absolutely cannot bring police with guns drawn into a school,” Boyd said….

Boyd said police have to have individual students suspected of drug activity, then any action taken must target those suspects. He said investigators should have called individual suspected students to the principal’s office to check their bags for drugs.

Good.

Amnesty denounces ‘murder spree’ in Thai war on drugs.

In a report released today, Amnesty, the human rights group, criticises the lack of a credible investigation into the bloodshed unleashed by this year’s official war on drugs.

At least 2,252 people were killed in a three-month anti-drug campaign, yet Thaksin Shinawatra, prime minister, “appeared to condone such killings” with repeated public statements that death was an appropriate fate for drug dealers.

“The stated policy of the royal Thai government has allowed the killing of more than 2,000 people by unknown assailants with impunity,” the report said.

The U.S. government reacted immediately to the horrifying report by taking two dramatic actions…
1. U.S. to seek free trade agreement with Thailand

President Bush recently announced the United States intends to negotiate a free-trade agreement with Thailand.
Eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers is expected to increase U.S. exports — particularly of agricultural goods…

… but presumably not all agricultural goods.
2. The United States is supplying advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAMs) to Thailand…

“We have no comment on arms deliveries to Thailand,” a tight-lipped US Embassy spokesman said when asked about the air-intercept missiles being delivered.

If the “War on Drugs” cannot be successfully waged while our Bill of Rights remains in force, the problem is not with the Bill of Rights — it’s with the War on Drugs.

(from Tuesday’s editorial “End the Dragnets” in the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a fourth amendment case currently in the Supreme Court.)

Ayn Rand writing in Atlas Shrugged (via FreedomSight):

Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We WANT them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.

• Howard Dean: Yes
• John Kerry: Yes
• John Edwards: Yes
• Carol Moseley Braun: I’m not going to answer
• Dennis Kucinich: No, but I think it ought to be decriminalized
• Al Sharpton: I grew up in the church. We didn’t believe in that.
• Wesley Clark: Never used it
• Joseph Lieberman: I never used marijuana, sorry.

Transcript.

In today’s Village Voice: The DEA’s War on Pain Doctors by Frank Owen

Some in the medical community call it “a war on pain doctors,” others “a government jihad” or “state-sponsored terrorism.” However you describe the current campaign, which according to pain-patient advocates began under Janet Reno, but which they say has increased in intensity under John Ashcroft, the DEA’s hardball tacticsÖstorming clinics in SWAT-style gear, ransacking offices, and hauling off doctors in handcuffsÖhave scared physicians nationwide to the extent that legitimate pain sufferers now find it increasingly difficult to get the medicine they need. Doctors’ offices today display signs that say “Don’t ask for OxyContin” or “No OxyContin prescribed here.” And medical schools advise students not to choose pain management as a career because the field is too fraught with potential legal dangers.

“The war on drugs has turned into a war on doctors and pain patients,” says Dr. Ronald Myers, president of the American Pain Institute and a Baptist minister who operates a string of clinics for poor people in the Mississippi Delta. “Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going to prison. The DEA is creating a situation where legitimate pain patients now have to go to the streets to get their medication. It’s a health care catastrophe in the making…”

…some doctors believe that the DEA, having conspicuously failed to stem the tide of illegal drug use in this country, is coming after physicians to ratchet up the agency’s prosecution count. (This year alone, two federal reviews lambasted the DEA for its poor performance in fighting illegal drug use, one report giving the agency a zero on a scale of one to 100.)

The entire article is excellent, and a real indictment of the policies of the DEA. I have an earlier post on the subject here.
Is there something just a little out of whack with the DEA? They’ve got a public relations problem, so they’re going around in full riot gear busting terminally ill medical marijuana patients, doctors, and bong makers. My suggestion? Next year reduce their budget by $1,897.300,000.

New Bedford, Massachusetts: Mayor, White House discuss solutions. Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz Jr. has really gotten in bed with the Drug Czar, including developing a plan for volunteer drug testing of all middle and high school students. (Of course, the voluntary part would not actually mean that it would be voluntary to the students, but just to their parents, and it’s assumed the funding would come from tax funds.)

In a telephone conversation last week, John P. Walters told the mayor that personnel would be dispatched to work with the city in finding ways to aggressively deal with New Bedford’s serious drug problems.

In addition to working with the Drug Czar on testing kids, the Mayor has had a relationship with Walters in a number of ways, including extablishing a new DEA office (soon to expand) and other programs.
I think I can cross New Bedford off my list of places to live.
Polk County, Florida: Polk County school district receives federal grant to begin drug testing
All High School athletes will now have to pass a drug test before competing. The $250,000 project is funded by the Department of Education.
Get this: the program will test athletes for marijuana use, but not performance enhancing drugs like steroids. (Apparently the steroid test is too expensive.) What lunacy!
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Department of Education would give a school district $250,000 for books?
Freeport, Illinois: Freeport to participate in nationwide study: Youth problems to be addressed through prevention; leaders to work in broad-based group.
The difference here is this program (part of Communities that Care), appears to take the approach of targeted plans to meet the needs of a particular community’s youth, including developing programs that get young people involved in positive activities (as a partial method of preventing drug use, teen pregnancy, etc.). It’s also not run by the federal government.
Now I’m not very familiar with this program, other than what I’ve read on the web (I’d love to hear from someone with first-hand knowledge), but it seems to me at first glance that this is an approach that makes some sense (certainly more valuable than drug testing!)

Now that the UK is looking to downgrade cannabis, the loonies are coming out. No, not potheads — but drug warriors grasping at straws to scare people.
The Sunday Telegraph ran CANNABIS USE CAUSES ‘HUNDREDS OF DEATHS A YEAR’, CORONER WARNS. Yes, Hamish Turner and others have “proof” that marijuana is killing people right and left.
Of course their proof consists of statistics like: “in 2000, 12 per cent of the 3,400 people killed in road accidents showed traces of cannabis.” Traces. Of a drug that over 5 million people in Britain regularly use and that stays in your blood for days. Yep, that’s a causal link, all right. Of course, they probably also found traces of chocolate and tea and other dangerous substances.
But my favorite in the article:

Cannabis also contributed to the death of Dragan Radoslavjevic, 42, from Paignton, Devon.æ He died earlier this year after using a power tool to drill a hole in his head. An inquest in Torquay heard that he suffered from depression and relied on drugs such as cannabis and heroin. [my emphasis]

Considering over 40% of Americans have tried marijuana, it looks like we are way overdue for a huge rash of self-inflicted deaths by power drill to the head!
Anybody got a 1/2″ skull bit I can borrow?