Drug WarRant

Cops Against the Drug War

The news story is not that the war on drugs has failed, it’s who’s saying it now. It’s not like it’s a front for fringy, pony-tailed pot smokers.

You need to read the excellent article: “Cops Against the Drug War” by Nina Shapiro, in the current issue of Seattle Weekly. This is a feature about the wonderful organization called LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which has done an great job of drawing together some of the real front line warriors who have come to realize that the war doesn’t work, and that drug policies must be changed.
Here are a few quotes from law enforcement personnel (from the article and elsewhere):

Check out the article, and also stop by LEAP’s website and support their activities.

“Guest Rant: Ethan Straffin takes on Lou Dobbs”
Last week, Lou Dobbs hosted a series on CNN called “The Forgotten War” (entire transcript) in which he gave particular emphasis to the distortions of drug war cheerleaders like former drug czar William Bennett and current drug czar John Walters.
On August 10, Dobbs followed this stunt with an outrageous OpEd in the New York Daily News, in which he parroted false and distorted information from the drug warriors, and ignored his supposed economic credentials.
As a special treat today, I bring you the wonderful response by a fellow drug policy reformer Ethan Straffin. You can also read Lou Dobbs’ original article, and my letter to the editor.
— Read the Full Story —

Federal Government would rather have poor children become drug dealers than get an education.
One of the many stupid laws to be passed in the name of the war on drugs is the 1998 revision to the Higher Education Act, which included a new provision that blocked college opportunities to students revealing drug convictions on their Application for Federal Student Aid. If you’ve raped someone, it doesn’t affect your financial aid, but if you’ve had an arrest in your past for smoking a joint, forget about getting federal assistance. This, of course, doesn’t affect the children of congressmen — they can afford college without aid.
Apparently, nobody in Congress thought about the practical aspects. Imagine a promising boy who had some youthful indiscretions, including a bust for possessing a substance that is safer than what the congressman drinks at business lunches. The young person has paid the price for his indiscretion and now wants to make something of himself by going to college. “Sorry. No college for you.” So what does he do? No education. Not many jobs in his community except…
Anyway, Senator Kennedy is planning to soon introduce a bill to overturn this provision. He needs a Republican co-sponsor, and there are a few who could possibly be convinced. So if you live in the states of Senators Mike DeWine (OH), Jeff
Sessions (AL), John Warner (VA), Sam Brownback (KS), Lincoln Chafee (RI), Olympia Snowe (ME), or Arlen Specter (PA), click on their name to send a targeted letter to them.
For more information, and to write your representatives in general about the HEA, or sign the petition, go to Raise Your Voice.
Oh, and if you live in the district of Mark Souder (IN), who authored this piece of crap, vote him out.
By the way, I’m proud to say that my institution – Illinois State University – was one of the earliest to endorse a resolution calling for the repeal of this horrible provision.

Judiciary Face-off
As I mentioned earlier this week, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive requiring prosecutors to snitch on judges who use their own discretion and provide lighter sentences than Ashcroft wants. Senator Edward Kennedy accused Ashcroft of engaging in an “ongoing attack on judicial independence.”
Now another Kennedy has entered the fray — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. While not directly responding to Ashcroft, Kennedy took the opportunity in an address to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association yesterday to blast mandatory minimum sentences.

“I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences,” Kennedy said. “In all too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unjust.”

Although Kennedy himself has voted on the Court to uphold mandatory minimums and finds them constitutional he noted that our “resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long,” and that it is “a grave mistake to retain a policy just because a court finds it constitutional.”

As Congress and the Administration continues to take pot-shots at the judiciary (not to mention Pat Robertson, who has organized prayer groups to convince God to “remove” several Supreme Court justices), it will be interesting to see whether or how the judiciary finds additional ways to assert itself.
Here’s an idea. When the next medical marijuana case makes it to the Supreme Court, the justices could send a strong message to the administration by affirming that the Federal Government does not have the right to interfere with state law that is designed to protect the health of its citizens.

Can someone explain this?
On the DEA website, there is a Drug Intelligence Brief titled: “Area Codes: Frequently Asked Questions (June 2003)”.

After giving a page of general information about how area codes work, and how they’re assigned to different geographic regions, etc., the credits at the bottom note that “This report was prepared by the DEA Intelligence Division, Office of Strategic Intelligence, Domestic Strategic Intelligence Unit and the Dangerous Drugs Strategic Intelligence Unit.”
I’m having a hard time here. Is this really the DEA’s idea of an intelligence briefing? Is the concept of an intelligence briefing given by the DEA an oxymoron? Do they believe that drug dealers are using area codes for some nefarious purpose? Is the DEA looking to take over long distance? Will Carrot-Top start urging us to dial 1-800-CALL-DEA?
Or, perhaps, the DEA is just panicked that when we run out of area codes it will be harder to keep track of the citizens it wants to control.

Well, duh!
Bush Administration Misuses Science Data, Report Says. “The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says.” The New York Times article (also covered in other media) gives an overview of a new report called “Politics and Science in the Bush Administration.”
Of course, the drug policy reform world has been quite aware of this fact. From the lies and exaggerations coming from the ONDCP to the ignorance of major scientific evidence on the part of the new Administrator of the DEA, science has been ignored and altered to fit the drug policy agenda of the administration.
This new report doesn’t cover very much, and the one reference to drug policy is old news, but I thought it was worth including it here (full report available as a pdf – thanks to David Harris for the link):

The Administration undermined its ability to obtain scientific advice on substance abuse by using an apparent political litmus test for appointees to an important drug abuse research committee.
In 2002, Dr. William R. Miller, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at University of New Mexico, was invited to join the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse. This advisory committee guides policy and funding on drug abuse at NIH. Before Dr. Miller could be appointed, however, an official from Secretary Thompson’s office called him to ask several questions. These questions included whether he was sympathetic to faith-based initiatives, whether he supported abortion rights, whether he supported the death penalty for drug kingpins, and whether he had voted for President Bush.
Dr. Miller recalled that Secretary Thompson’s aide said, “I need to vet you to determine whether you might have any views that would be an embarrassment to the president.” After Dr. Miller answered that he does support needle exchange — a public health intervention proven to save lives but opposed by social conservatives — the aide responded, “That’s a problem.” When asked whether he voted for Bush, Dr. Miller said that he had not. The aide asked, “Why didn’t you support the President?”
The aide told Dr. Miller he would determine whether his views were acceptable. Dr. Miller was never called back, and his name was not on the final list of appointees. Informed of what happened, Dr. Donald Kennedy, past president of Stanford University and editor of Science, commented: “I don’t think any administration has penetrated so deeply into the advisory committee structure as this one, and I think it matters . . . . If you start picking people by their ideology instead of their scientific credentials, you are inevitably reducing the quality of the advisory group.”

And now for something completely different…
Check out the page on Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) and the controversy surrounding this substance which has been linked to cancer and apparently is used a great deal in the dairy industry. How long will it take for the DEA to add this to the Schedule of Controlled Substances?

Odds and Ends
— Media Awareness Project has a new letter writing alert regarding a US Attorney for Hawaii who used grossly inflated “ice” numbers in order to try to justify a weakening of constitutional protections. Go there and add your voice.
— John Ashcroft is trying to control sentencing by requiring prosecutors to snitch on judges who use their own discretion and provide lighter sentences than Ashcroft wants. (Boston Globe)
— The last issue of The Week Online with DRCNet is available online (beginning next week it will be called the Drug War Chronicle). Check out the article on the marinol prescription death sentence.
— The new issue of Drug Sense Weekly is also out, with an excellent sampling of drug war news from around the world. (and thanks for the plug!)
— If you have been denied financial aid for college due to a past drug arrest, check out the John W. Perry Fund scholarship. Also visit that page to see how you can help with donations or getting the outrageous Higher Education Act provision changed.

“DEA Bad Girl Michele Leonhart”

The new nominee for Deputy Administrator of the DEA is a gung-ho drug warrior with questionable ties to a discredited super-snitch.

The Bush administration wants to head up the Drug Enforcement Agency with two women for the first time in the history of the agency.
The Senate has already confirmed Karen Tandy as DEA administrator by unanimous consent in a late-night session last Thursday. As Jason Vest reported in A New Hard-Liner at the DEA, Tandy has a history of “prosecutorial overzealousness” and “ignorance of key drug policy studies.”

Now President Bush has announced his intention to nominate Michele M. Leonhart, Special Agent in Charge of DEA’s Los Angeles Division, for the position of Deputy Administrator.
Leonhart has already established herself as another hard-liner who will not be popular in the drug reform community.
In June of 2001, she blasted ecstasy use at raves with her statement that “some of the dances in the desert are no longer just dances, they’re like violent crack houses set to music.”
She has also been a visible part of the DEA’s attacks on California’s medical marijuana laws. On January 9, 1998, when U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi announced in a press conference that the government would take action against California medical marijuana clubs (arguably the start of the DEA’s current war against the sick), Leonhart was standing at his side.
Read the rest of the story…

That’s a lot of cocaine… or is it?
Bolivian police, acting on tips from the DEA and Spanish police, seized 5 tons of cocaine destined for Spain, the largest seizure in Bolivia’s history. They found 2 tons on Friday, and another 3 tons in a mashed potato shipment on Saturday.

Now this is enough cocaine for over 4 million doses. Expect to hear quite a bit from the drug warriors on this topic in the next few weeks, and how they’re “winning” the war on drugs. After all, 5 tons has got to put a huge dent in the supply, right? You’d think so, unless you looked at the DEA’s own numbers and realized that they’ve seized around 1,000 tons of cocaine since 1986, without affecting the availability or street price in any significant way.