Drug WarRant

It certainly seems that a tipping point has been reached regarding marijuana and prohibition, although it’s way too early to relax as the opposition has a lot at stake in the game and will not give up easily.

However, it’s important to remind ourselves that our destructive drug war is damaging to society and people regardless of the drugs being prohibited.

Tony Newman: Beyond Marijuana: Gearing Up For the Battle to Decriminalize All Drugs

But what about the other drugs? My colleagues and I at the Drug Policy Alliance are committed to ensuring the decriminalization of all drug use becomes a political priority.

Criminalization is not only failing to effectively control drug use, it’s a barrier to protecting individual and public health. As long as drug use is a crime, people are going to be afraid to get help.

John Stossel: The War on Drugs is Worse Than NSA Spying

It’s true that some Americans destroy their lives and their families’ lives by using drugs. Others struggle with addiction. But if illegal drugs are as horrible and addictive as we’ve been told, how come the government’s own statistics say millions try those drugs but only a small percentage continue using?

Ninety-five percent of those who have tried what we think of as “hard drugs” report not using the substances in the past month. […]

“The data simply shows that the vast majority of people who use these drugs don’t go on to become addicted,” he said on my show. “In fact, some of these people go on to become president.” […]

In fact, Hart says, the drug war is worse than [alcohol] Prohibition. It costs more, has lasted longer and doesn’t just kill people in the U.S.: From Afghanistan to Colombia, American helicopters try to destroy drug crops. Foreigners gain one more reason to hate Yankees.

Arrogant and ignorant politicians do more harm than the social problems themselves.

The DEA is back to pushing against the bill to legalize hemp farming with a set of talking points, which mostly boils down to, as we’ve said here before, that law enforcement is too stupid to figure out the difference.

Ryan Grim reports: DEA Wages Hemp War Behind The Scenes In House

The Drug Enforcement Administration has kicked its lobbying against legalizing industrial hemp into high gear, hoping to block an amendment in the House that would decriminalize the crop for research purposes.[…]

The Huffington Post has obtained a copy of talking points the DEA is circulating among members of Congress to press them to oppose the amendment — raising the seemingly incongruous specter of the government using its resources to lobby itself.

The talking points, paradoxically, represent a step forward in the debate. In the Senate, hemp advocates were left only to counter vague “law enforcement concerns” that senators told HuffPost were a factor in their willingness to support reform. By laying out those specific reforms, hemp backers will attempt to rebut them point by point.

Broadly, the DEA’s case focuses on the supposed inability to easily distinguish between hemp and its cousin, marijuana. The similarity, the DEA argues, would allow pot growers to shield their plants behind rows of hemp plants. But the DEA appears not to have gotten the talk about the birds and the bees. […]

The DEA also says that there’s already a system in place for growing industrial hemp…

The CSA permits the cultivation of cannabis for industrial purposes, provided the grower has obtained a DEA registration to do so.

Yeah, good luck getting one of those.

Update: Amendment #37 passed the House 225 to 200!

Further update: However, the farm bill itself didn’t pass. Good news is that when it does, better odds that this amendment will be able to ride with it.

By the way, in response to several commenters, my understanding is that this amendment actually bypasses the DEA approval process for university research purposes (someone correct me if I’m wrong).

We haven’t talked much directly here about the ongoing NSA/FISA and related scandals in the news. After all, one could say, it’s not directly about drug policy. And yet, it seems pretty obvious to me which “side” the vast majority of my readers is likely to find themselves.

This article helps to articulate it. NSA scandal separates liberty lovers from poseurs

Most Americans who pay any attention to politics believe the nation’s great chasm is between “Red State” Republicans and “Blue State” Democrats. While the nation’s two major parties have their differences, the real divide is and always has been between those who reflexively trust the authorities and those who recognize that their own government poses the gravest threat to their liberties.

The latest scandal, in which a whistleblower revealed two National Security Agency programs that gather the phone and computer records of Americans in a fishing expedition designed to find links to terrorists, has jump-started this debate. As the Associated Press reported, this has “reinvigorated an odd-couple political alliance of the far left and right. A number of Democratic civil liberties activists, along with libertarian-leaning Republicans, say the government actions are too broad and don’t adequately protect citizens’ privacy.”

And that’s correct. Drug policy reform has a lot less to do with red vs. green than between authoritarians and those who value liberty.

For those who have seen the destruction of the drug war, who could possibly trust the government to be responsible with our communications while operating in total secrecy? Being concerned with these revelations is a no-brainer.

The real disturbing part of the story is the large number of sheep who are willing to give up their freedom for some vaguely imagined undefined benefit, and who strangely trust government officials to not abuse power.

Finally, I’m a huge fan of the incredible journalistic work done by Glenn Greenwald, who has always been more concerned with performing critically important government watchdog functions than propping up some political party. There are a lot of people in power trying hard to tear him down right now. I hope he gets through this unscathed.

Update: See also Diane Goldstein on this topic. The Surveillance State: How The War On Drugs And The War On Terror Go Hand In Hand

Powerful piece by LEAP’s Neill Franklin in the Baltimore Sun: Another needless death in America’s long, failed war on drugs

As long as we continue with the failed drug war and prohibition, the losses will continue to mount on all sides. Families will continue to lose fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, nieces and nephews; some to prison, some to murder and too many to both. Neighborhoods like Reservoir Hill will remain captive to violence and decay, and residents will continue to question what happened to the security and prosperity they once enjoyed as a community.

Great speech by Stephen Lewis at the International Harm Reduction Conference. Starts off slow, but really gets going. He rips into the INCB and the UNODC big-time. Here’s a taste:

“You know what I’d like to do?  I’d like to criminalize the International Narcotics Control Board.  Not to criminalize the use of drugs, but to criminalize the International Narcotics Control Board, and I’d like to put all of them in drug detention centers for a year, and let them understand what they’re doing to so many perfectly innocent people who have a health problem in other parts of the world.

“And then it strikes me that we should go after the members of the Board individually – there’s only a dozen of them […] I think we should go after them by way of OpEds and by way of letters to the editor and by way of press conferences, and just nail these hypocrites to the mast.”

Matthew Cooke: How to End the War on Drugs

Call me crazy but I find it absurd to claim we’re a free country while our government dictates what adults can or can not do in the privacy of our own homes. We’ve accepted a massive blow to a fundamental expression of individual freedom if our own minds and bodies are off-limits to personal exploration. […]

My recommendation would be to allow pharmacies to sell recreational drugs to adults-only, along with plenty of warning information. We regulate and cap the prices at cost — so they’re viewed as cheap and the black-market incentive is eliminated along with the tendency for corruption.

You may disagree with his specific recommendation, but at least it’s a recommendation. It bothers me a bit that we have to turn to Transform in the UK for an actual set of post-drug-war regulatory options. We need a group in the U.S. to put together a version of it (perhaps just adapting Transform’s document) so it can be promoted through our media just how many viable options there are for different drugs other than drug war.

‘That’s Some Pretty Good Weed’: Paul McCartney ‘Halts Concert After Smelling Marijuana From Crowd’

“That’s some pretty good weed I can smell up here,” he said halfway through his set, adding “Whew! What are you doing to me?”

It just so happens that two very good friends of mine were in the front row for the concert… Hmmm….

We’ve been making fun of Patrick Kennedy here, for good reason. This doesn’t help. It’s a well-intentioned-sounding piece unless you know what Patrick is spending most of his time these days doing, in which case the irony is unbearable. And no, Patrick, you are not your uncle.

The New York Times editorial board has come out with a powerful and scathing editorial: Racially Biased Arrests for Pot

Regardless of laws in individual states, federal officials and local police departments need to abandon policies that evaluate officers based on numerical arrest goals, which encourage petty arrests, along with illegal stops that violate the Fourth Amendment.

This also means restructuring a main federal program that finances state and local efforts to enforce drug laws so that petty marijuana arrests are no longer counted as evidence of effective police performance. Beyond that, law enforcement agencies need to put an end to what is obviously a widespread practice of racial profiling.

Interesting little court case in Illinois with the silly title traditional in forfeiture cases: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS v. $280,020 in UNITED STATES CURRENCY. This was one of those cases where police were tipped off that someone bought a one-way bus ticket in cash, searched the luggage, found a bunch of cash, had a drug dog sniff it and dutifully alert, and seized the money. The court ruled that buying a one-way ticket isn’t probable cause, and without the owner’s consent to search, the officers had nothing and must return the money. Good call on the profiling, and good reminder to never consent to a search.

Maher Rips Apart Patrick Kennedy’s Anti-Pot Crusade: You Sound Like ‘Nancy Reagan In 1983′

Patrick Kennedy really sounds like he’s been brainwashed in this segment. Seems to me that Maher just gave up at the end, there, because Kennedy was so pathetic-sounding.

Utah Parents Sue City After Daughter Is Killed Allegedly “Assassination Style” By Now-Disbanding Special Narcotics Unit

Melissa Kennedy and Frederick Willard, parents of the late Danielle Willard, are suing local police in an extraordinary case in which they say that their daughter was shot to death “assassination style” by a now disbanded special narcotics unit that has been accused of corruption and abuse. […]

West Valley City is a small suburb of Salt Lake City. Danielle Willard, 21, was fatally shot in the back of her head around 1:30 pm by defendants Shaun Cowley and Kevin Salmon. The complaint states “since the tragic shooting of Danielle Willard, it has been uncovered that Officers Cowley and Salmon were engaged in a pattern and practice of illegal conduct and widespread and systemic corruption, sanctioned by the West Valley Police Department, culminating in the unjustified and senseless killing of Danielle Willard.” The Complaint details allegations of corruption in the narcotic unit leading up to its disbanding. […]

The unit was disbanded after the disappearance of money and drugs as well as the tossing out of roughly 100 drug cases.

Apparently it was only after a routine investigation into the shooting that the missing drugs and money and widespread corruption was discovered in the task force. It had to be pretty major to result in 100 drug cases being tossed. And yet the parents of this girl have to file a lawsuit in order to try to find out what really happened to their daughter.

Jacob Sullum discusses one of the provisions in the Colorado pot regs: Can Colorado’s Limit on Pot Purchases by Nonresidents Survive Constitutional Challenges?

The marijuana regulation law that Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed last month includes a quarter-ounce limit on pot purchases by visitors from other states. Colorado residents, by contrast, may buy up to an ounce at a time. As I have mentioned before, making the purchase limit hinge on residency seems inconsistent with Amendment 64, the marijuana legalization initiative that is now part of Colorado’s constitution. The quarter-ounce rule may also be vulnerable to challenge under the U.S. Constitution, since it discriminates against residents of other states.

Regardless of the Constitutional questions, one of my first reaction is bemusement that this is such a big deal.

Has anyone driven from Illinois or Iowa into Missouri? As soon as you cross the border, you see things like this:

In fact, you’re likely to see five or six of these stores right next to each other just inside the border.

Now, everyone knows that the fireworks sold here are legal in Missouri, but not in Illinois or Iowa. And everyone knows that the reason that these stores are at the border… is to sell them to people in Illinois and Iowa. And while theoretically, you might get arrested for bringing them into those states, odds are you won’t.

And unlike marijuana, these things can blind you or cause you to lose a finger.

This morning, the White House is hosting an event: White House Children of Incarcerated Parents Champions of Change. It’s an event to honor some folks who have gone out of their way to work with and help children of incarcerated parents. That’s a good thing.

After all, children of incarcerated parents are generally more likely to end up in trouble with the law themselves, and stopping that cycle is incredibly important.

On the other hand, Rafael LeMaitre (ONDCP Communications Director) tweeted about the program:

Watch live NOW: http://t.co/dXE6CABQOG Children of incarcerated parents. This is why Obama Administration’s #DrugPolicyReform plan matters.

No, this is why real drug policy reform matters. The ideas we have will dramatically reduce the number of incarcerated parents. The ideas put forth by the ONDCP will merely divert a few of the incarcerated into drug courts.