Drug WarRant

Sorry, but I don’t buy it…

Drug smugglers set free for lack of money to prosecute

Each year the Border Patrol checkpoint seizes hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana.

“We have ’em put it in spare tires and gas tanks,” said a Border Patrol agent, whose voice and identity has been disguised because the agent feared of being fired for telling us what happens next – that up to 60 smugglers a month are being let go.

This Border Patrol agent, who’s in disguise for fear of being fired, said that up to 60 drug smugglers a month are being released. “We catch ’em, but then because our hands are tied, they end up walking and being released,” said the agent. […]

Police here say federal authorities generally won’t prosecute traffickers moving less than 150 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $120,000. So they leave those cases and the costs to local district attorneys, including Carlos Garcia of Brooks County.

“If we were to accept them, we’re accepting them with all those financial responsibilities as well, and right now we’re just not at a point where we can do that,” Garcia said, adding that they just can’t afford it.

The Justice Department used to help pay for the prosecutions in border areas. The funding reached $31 million in 2010 but fell to $5 million this year. There’s no money in the White House budget request for next year.

There’s absolutely no lack of money in the drug war.

If this was of a concern to the feds, they could move some of the money they’re spending on going after medical marijuana providers.

A little more research shows that it’s all about making a case to get more money. The reason that the money was cut was that an audit shows the county had been overpaid almost $2 million by the feds that they haven’t paid back.

Everybody wants their piece of the drug war pie.

… in so many ways.

17 people in Scotland and Ireland have died from fake ecstasy tablets.

The green pills, with a Rolex crown stamped on them, often contain a dangerous chemical called PMA.

They cause extremely high temperatures, hallucinations and convulsions.

When drugs are legal and regulated, these deaths don’t happen.

I’m in Iowa visiting my Mom, who just celebrated her 91st birthday. She’s a regular weekly reader of the Rant and also enjoys reading the comments of those on the couch.

‘Seatbelt Checkpoints’ to Search Cars Without Warrants, Make Drug Arrests

The Beckley, West Virginia Police Department set up a “seatbelt checkpoint,” which resulted in several drug arrests on July 2.

The Beckley police claimed they did the checkpoint to inform residents and raise awareness of a new seatbelt law that goes into effect on July 9.

However, police brought K-9 drug-sniffing dogs to the checkpoints, which were not needed for seatbelt education.

Another example of law enforcement personnel purposely mocking and bypassing the law for their own benefit.

Related, but perhaps more hopeful…

Blood, spit and cops: Nationwide drug roadblocks raise eyebrows

It’s not just in Alabama. The roadblocks are part of a national study led by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is trying to determine how many drivers are on the road with drugs or alcohol in their systems. Similar roadblocks will be erected in dozens of communities across the nation this year, according to the agency.

It’s been going on for decades. Previous surveys date to the 1970s. The last one was run in 2007, and it included the collection of blood and saliva samples without apparent controversy, sheriff’s spokesmen in both Alabama counties said.

But this time, it’s happening as the Obama administration struggles to explain revelations that U.S. spy organizations have been tracking phone and Internet traffic. Against that backdrop, the NHTSA-backed roadblocks have led to complaints in Alabama about an intrusive federal government.

Nice. Perhaps the country is actually getting ready to have a real conversation about these issues.

After all, as we’ve said here often, there are direct connections between government overreach in the so-called war on terror, and the war on drugs.

This article was in Rolling Stone last week, and I believe it’s an important read, if you haven’t already…

Five Reasons Cops Want to Legalize Weed

Of course, it’s more than just weed, and LEAP is on record for being in favor of legalized regulation of all recreational drugs, and these points still hold.

1. It’s about public safety. […]

2. Cops want to focus on crimes that hurt real victims. […]

3. Cops want strong relationships with the communities they serve. […]

4. The war on pot encourages bad – and even illegal – police practices. […]

5. Cops want to stop kids from abusing drugs.

These are good reasons for cops to support legalization, and also very good reasons for the rest of us to want legalization — so that we can work toward restoring a proper relationship between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.

On Independence Day today, a flag made of hemp fiber is flying over the Capitol Building. A nice nod to tradition. The flag is from Colorado and was arranged by Representative Jared Polis.

Not everyone was pleased.

“This is a completely and utterly disgraceful way to commemorate the birth of our country,” says Calvina Fay, Executive Director of Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. and Save Our Society From Drugs. “There are millions of families in America that battle the scourge of addiction every day and many of them have lost loved ones to drugs,” continued Fay.

“This insensitive gesture makes a mockery of our nation’s prevention, treatment and law enforcement efforts. July 4th is a day that should be spent celebrating the privilege of living in America, not promoting or normalizing drug use to our citizenry,” concluded Fay.

One of the side-effects of the drug war is that it has given wide ranges of government employees the notion that when it comes to drugs, citizens don’t have rights. It’s an ugly and pernicious effect.

It even goes so far as to include snatching children from their parents.

In 2010, Lawrence Country Children and Youth Services seized 3-day-old Isabella and took her from her mother Elizabeth Mort. All based on a hospital drug test that registered the poppy seed bagel she had eaten before going in to the hospital. She wasn’t even informed she had failed the test and no verification was done before taking her child.

Mother wins lawsuit over poppy seed bagel

A child welfare agency and hospital in Pennsylvania have paid Elizabeth Mort $143,500 for the mistake.

Good.

Too bad the individuals involved didn’t have to pay out of their own pockets.

However, the fact that the hospital and the agency had to pay will make an impact. Budgets are a serious thing to these agencies, and you can bet that a number of agencies around the country are discussing this case. Maybe that will save another mother from being separated from her child.

Mark Kleiman does an excellent job responding to the latest schizophrenia scare with his post: Cannabis and schizophrenia: Scare stories are not policy arguments

If I had a young friend with a family history of schizophrenia or who had experienced schizophrenic symptoms, I’d advise that person to stay away from cannabis. Why take unnecessary chances? But the evidence of an actual causal link is fairly underwhelming; it’s very hard to tell whether early cannabis use might reflect attempts at self-medication for pre-clinical symptoms rather than being an actual precipitating cause.

At the population level, we have what seems to me like strong negative evidence on the question whether increasing the availability of cannabis will lead to a measurable increase in the number of people with disabling levels of schizophrenia.

We’ve been actually fairly fortunate on this side of the pond that most policy leaders have not fallen for the schizophrenia scare as a significant anti-legalization argument. But then again, we don’t have the Daily Mail.

What we have is the Kevin Sabet:

Why isn’t this getting more play? Doc at Yale School of Medicine: Pot-Smoking & the Schizophrenia Connection http://t.co/1c1TF9dBCY via @WSJ

The Economics Behind the US Government’s Unwinnable War on Drugs

Benjamin Powell, in this essential article, has explained the basics of economics and the drug war in plain English. This is a great piece to share with people.

One of the biggest problems with those who support supply-side drug policy is a basic lack of understanding of simple economics. Once you understand the trade-offs that are a necessary result of the laws of economics, then it’s impossible to support the drug war if your goal is really to do what’s best for society.

‘Nobody racially profiles’: Bloomberg on the Council’s two ‘bad’ NYPD bills

“The racial profiling bill is just so unworkable,” he said today. “Nobody racially profiles.” […]

In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.”

Change in approach to drugs could lead to more arrests at Banks School District

At the request of city law enforcement, the Banks School District is changing its approach toward drugs, […]

Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Hanlon, who is contracted by the city of Banks to patrol the community and schools, announced the change at a Banks City Council meeting on June 11. […]

Although Hanlon said the district always called at some point, Banks schools handled discipline internally. By time he got involved, it was too late to arrest the student. His job was only to seize and destroy the material.

Now, Hanlon wants to be contacted as soon as the school finds drugs.

“I hate coming in on the tail end of stuff,” he said.

Humorless Ohio AG mugs ‘prescription’ coffee cup

Here’s the issue: does a coffee mug that mimics a prescription bottle and says “Prescription Coffee, RX#: VRY-CAF-N8D, Drink one mug by mouth, repeat until awake and alert” make fun of prescription drug abuse?

DeWine thinks so.

“People die from accidental drug overdoses in this state every day, and these products make light of the problem,” DeWine said in a May press release.“We don’t find these products funny at all.” […]

May was when DeWine and 22 other state attorneys general asked the company to pull the Prescription Line of glasses, coasters, mugs and drink holders.

Tweet from Rafael LeMaitre at ONDCP:

Did you know that we’re supporting research to treat cocaine addiction w/ a vaccine? The future of #DrugPolicyReform http://t.co/IVHrKsPCeT

Yingluck proposes drug-free Asean by 2015

BANGKOK, June 26 (Bernama) — Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has announced her government’s policies on anti-narcotics, concrete protection of community dwellers from drug addiction and support the Association of Southeast Asian nations (Asean) to become a world drug-free region by 2015.

Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder. by Mike Konczal in the Washington Post.

It’s hard to slog through all the hand-wringing in this article — fears about making the wrong decisions in regulating marijuana, as though legalization involved suspending a massive anvil above the population and you only had one opportunity to get the suspension system correct.

But the fact is, of all the substances or activities that you might have government regulate, marijuana is one of the least scary. It’s also one of the hardest to contain.

Just legalize it. Slap a few regulations to mostly keep it away from kids and to insure that commercially sold marijuana isn’t moldy and isn’t grown in ecologically damaging ways, and see what happens. Wait until the spike from the novelty wears off and then tweak as needed.

But of course that won’t happen. They’re going to argue and argue over what will ultimately be irrelevant: how to use regulation to prevent addiction (hint: that’s not one of the powers of regulation).