Drug WarRant

Student Injured by K-9 Officer (via Radley)

An 11-year-old male student has been treated for “minor injuries” sustained following a bite from a Brazil Police Department K-9 officer at the Red Ribbon Awareness week kick-off event at the Clay County Courthouse Thursday, officials said. […]

McQueen said a very small amount of illegal drugs were hidden on one of the juveniles to show how the dogs can find even the smallest trace of an illegal substance. He added all this was done “under exclusive control and supervision of members of the court and law enforcement.” […]

“As I got closer to the actors, Max began searching the juveniles,” according to the officer’s report. “The first male juvenile began moving his legs around as Max searched him. When the male began moving his legs, (this is what) I believe prompted Max’s action to bite the male juvenile on the left calf.”

There’s a well-trained dog: bite children if their legs move.

I guess the standard red-ribbon week activities like having the students wear different colored socks to school one day with the slogan “Sock it to drugs” just wasn’t enough any more.

Malta

Asked whether he would discriminate between hard drugs and soft drugs, Fr Cordina said that in terms of social responsibility, there is no difference between them.

“The abuse of hard drugs is easier to detect due to its overt symptoms. Yet marijuana is known as the silent killer. It affects the mind, leaving the abuser constantly high. People who abuse of it may abandon their families and their responsibilities.”

Update: Statement of the day from Uruguay —

#Uruguay rep on #marijuana reform: “we’d rather breach intl #narcotics conventions than intl #humanrights law” #reformconf

Exactly. I’ve long felt that that’s the easiest (and most true) approach to dropping out of the conventions. The simple fact is that the drug war, as conducted under the conventions, is a horrific violation of human rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is supposed to have supremacy over all other U.N. documents and treaties.

The big 2013 International Drug Policy Reform Conference is going on now in Denver.

I wish I could be there (for many reasons), but work prevents me from leaving at this time. Still, I’m enjoying hearing tidbits from the conference on Twitter and Facebook…

Ethan Nadelmann: The International Innovations plenary at 12:15 @ReformConf today is unprecedented, w/ top officials from 4 countries & key rep from NZ

Transform: Czech drugs tsar: Its time to start raising the issue of convention reform at the UN #reformconf

Czech drugs tsar: Russia and China will be the obstacles to convention reform, not the US. US up for discussion at least #reformconf

Release Drugs: Czech Republic in official discussions with US about possible amendment to int conventions – would need int consensus. #reformconf

Reform Conference: Such a powerful group of #parents telling their stories why they’re fighting to end the war on drugs. #ReformConf

Dan Riffle: I miss @KevinSabet and @RafaelONDCP. You’d think if they care about real #drugpolicyreform they’d be at the biggest drug policy #reformconf

Carlene Variyan: In a very sad, but important session at #ReformConf on situation in prisons. Canadian system’s bad, but I’m realizing how much uglier in USA

Maria Villanueva: *Sorry I stopped twitting, I was crying* #ReformConf

#ReformConf “This war, and much of the violence in Mexico, started here in the USA. My son & his friends are victims of it” -Javier #Sicilia

RX MaryJane: Slapped in the face by what the drug war in the US is doing to the people in Latin America. Tragic. #reformconf

Forfeiture Reform: Why has the Drug War gone on so long? Federal grants/asset forfeiture gave law enforcement an investment in prohibition. #reformconf

Anybody else getting interesting reports from the conference?

Shackled and pregnant Wis. case challenges ‘fetal protection law’

… seems to me there needs to be fetal (and mother) protection from drug warrior busybodies.

In cases like Beltran’s, “the woman loses pretty much every constitutional right we associate with personhood,” said Lynn Paltrow

We’ve seen so many permutations of this, from mothers having their newborn taken away because of a false “poppy seed muffin” drug test, to responsible medical marijuana users having their children removed.

All without any evidence that the children themselves are being harmed, but rather the assumption by government bureaucrats that they know what’s best for the child.

Another in the long list of destructive drug-war side-effects.

[By the way, the comments at this article are not particularly instructive — tends to devolve into a bunch of the standard ignorant red vs. blue bashing.]

Nick Gillespie has a nice piece in Time: 8 Things We Won’t Miss When Pot is Legal Everywhere

Legalizing pot won’t create a problem-free country any more than tearing down the Berlin Wall solved all the problems in East Germany or ending de jure segregation fixed race relations in the U.S. But it would reflect the will of an increasing number of citizens who realize the government has better things to do than tell us what we can and cannot put into our bodies. And it will also consign many terrible things about contemporary America to the dust heap of history.

We could probably add a few to the eight he lists.

The government is once again seeking the elusive “drug free” fantasy.

National Institute on Drug Abuse:

Please share: It’s Red Ribbon Week (Oct 23-31). Be part of the creation of a drug-free America by taking the Red Ribbon pledge: http://bit.ly/151SyIp

Drug-free America? Really? How?

I asked them for their definition of “drug free America,” but they haven’t responded.

How would they even answer that?

After all, our bodies create drugs that are necessary for our survival, so achieving a true drug-free America would require an act of genocide so horrific that it would dwarf the holocaust. Perhaps Homeland Security’s SWAT teams should pay a visit to the NIDA offices to see what they’re plotting.

But who knows… maybe NIDA has some other, secret, definition of drug-free that doesn’t actually include being… drug-free. Maybe they mean that they want America to stop taking drugs, ie, external drugs as opposed to bodily processes.

Of course, that would mean going after caffeine, so why isn’t NIDA campaigning against Starbucks? Or having meetings with Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies and asking them to stop making drugs?

Hmmm… I guess drug-free may be an even more restrictive definition to NIDA. Let’s see what else we can discover.

From their link, we find: “We will set a good example for our children by not using illegal drugs or medicine without a prescription.”

It’s certainly not drug-free, but it’s a more specific goal — aimed at the use of an arbitrary list of drugs that have been deemed illegal. But while individuals could live up to such a pledge, there’s still no way that America would stop using all such drugs, so a pledge won’t help them achieve a “drug-free” (under their definition) goal.

But wait — maybe we can help! If the goal is to achieve an America where nobody uses illegal drugs, that’s actually possible.

All we have to do is legalize all drugs.

It’s simple and effective.

May seem like a simple number, but it’s very big.

New Gallup Poll

58% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana
39% oppose

That’s a 19% differential.

Tipping point passed.

Very interesting, though not surprising…

Accidentally Revealed Document Shows TSA Doesn’t Think Terrorists Are Plotting to Attack Airplanes

… apparently a clerk at the 11th Circuit appeals court forgot to file the document under seal, allowing them to find out what was under the redactions… Included in there is the following, apparently quoted from the TSA’s own statements:

“As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing.”

Elsewhere, the TSA appears to admit that “due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers,” it’s unlikely that there’s much value in terrorists trying to hijack a plane these days (amusingly, that statement is a clear echo of Bruce Schneier’s statement criticizing the TSA’s security theater — suggesting that the TSA flat out knows that airport security is nothing more than such theatrics).

So we’re using tools that bend (or break) the bill of rights under the guise that they’re preventing terrorism. Right.

Amazingly, it appears that the government forced Corbett to redact the revelation that the TSA’s own threat assessments have shown “literally zero evidence that anyone is plotting to blow up an airline leaving from a domestic airport.” Corbett argues that this shows why the searches are not reasonable under the 4th Amendment. Corbett also points out that about the only thing the machines seem useful at catching are illegal drugs — but, as he notes, that’s “irrelevant to aviation security.” Sure, the government may like the fact that it catches illegal drugs with these machines, but the TSA can’t argue it needs the machines for “terrorism” when it knows that’s not true, and then tries to keep them just because it finds some narcotics…

As so often is the case, the war on terror and the war on drugs are not about their stated purposes.

Jacob Sullum thinks proposed marijuana taxes will be too high. Mark Kleiman thinks they’ll be too low.

• High Marijuana Taxes Could Derail Legalization Plans – Jacob Sullum
• Cannabis taxes will wind up too low, not too high – Mark Kleiman

I’ll let you read the two competing pieces and see where you think reality will land. I haven’t studied the tax proposals enough to have a prediction. I will say that I’m not personally opposed to a cannabis tax, in large part because it’ll make it harder to reverse legalization once governments get a taste. But it’s important that taxes be low enough to encourage people to quickly switch to legal channels.

In trying to decide between the two, you can’t really be faulted for questioning the reliability of Kleiman’s arguments, given the petty and petulant way Mark deals with people who have a different opinion.

Once again, Mark trots out the tired and offensive “you must be smoking” ad hominem:

“Anyone who’s worried about the price of cannabis is spending far too much time stoned.”

[Update: Mark explains his use of this argument in comments. Though not obvious, I can see how it could be read that way.]

It’s a ridiculous argument device that he uses to a bizarre extent.

Later on, he tries to “refute” Sullum in advance by attacking libertarianism in general.

Naturally, true-believing libertarians insist that cannabis legalization be done in the way likely to generate bad outcomes. Taxes BAD! Regulations BAD! “Commercial speech” is SACRED! The free market FOREVER! And of course drug abuse is a merely imaginary problem, so cannabis is just an ordinary commodity that the market will handle perfectly.

Again, a common Kleiman technique – refer to differences of opinion regarding how policy will work as opponents’ desiring a bad outcome. I’ve never heard a libertarian say that drug abuse is an imaginary problem – they just disagree with Kleiman regarding the best way to deal with it.

The slogan at the “Reality-Based Community” is “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” What they don’t say is that Kleiman treats his opinions as if they were facts.