Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Colorado Supreme Court still thinks there's a 4th Amendment In a 6-1 ruling: Blocks of marijuana found in the "back room" of a Colorado Springs liquor store can't be used as evidence against the store manager because he could reasonably expect privacy from searches of the back area under the U.S. Constitution, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday. ... "Galvadon was the night manager and the sole person in control of the store," Martinez wrote. "He used the back room to conduct the business of the store and maintained the right to exclude public access to the back room. ... For these reasons, we find that Galvadon maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in the back room." It's nice to see the courts still give a nod to the 4th now and then. 6:51:30 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

More Reactions to Propagandagate Matt Welch at Reason has a great article on the propaganda issue: Bamboozlers On the Loose. Of course, this is all just peanuts compared to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which since 1998 has spent $1 billion trying (and failing) to convince us that smoking the odd joint might kill you, or at least cause terrorism. When the TV networks squawked about the lost ad time, the ONDCP foreshadowed the Armstrong Williams payola scheme by suggesting some anti-drug story lines instead. It was a win-win, really. There are two profoundly undemocratic through-lines in the state's repeated purchase of propaganda. The first is the foul notion that we are a nation of people who literally can't handle the truth, and so must be influenced in ways we don't even realize by a government that knows our best interests better than we do. ... The second is an alarmingly cavalier approach to pissing away taxpayer money. ... Also, the editorial in today's Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, TX): Feds cross the line with fake news. When comedian Norm McDonald was on "Saturday Night Live," he was the anchorman on the show's Weekend Update skit. He would read headlines from that week's news and change portions of the stories to make them funny. At the end of the segment, he would sign off with the words, "And that's the fake news." It was funny as part of a comedy skit, but it has no place in the real world of journalism. More importantly, it has no place in government. ... One of the foundations of a free society is an independent press, completely free of government influence. Although some news outlets are often accused of supporting one faction or another of government, they are independent from those factions and don't get their marching orders from any political party. The press' role in a free society is to keep citizens informed about what government is doing and to hold officials accountable to the Constitution they've sworn to uphold. That's not possible if the media are spoon-fed supposed news stories that support government agendas. The feds should stay out of the news business and the media should be more careful about their sources. 4:39:10 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

British Documentary Advocates Legalization of Cocaine Via TalkLeft. Cocaine, a new documentary by award-winning director Angus Macqueen, will air on British Television next week over several days. Full article. Celebrated documentary-maker Angus Macqueen spent 18 months on the cocaine trail across Latin America from the dirt-poor valleys of Peru to the shanty towns of Rio. Here he recalls the journey that revolutionised his views and explains why he believes 'the dandruff of the Andes' should be sold in Boots ... This journey has left me thinking the politically unthinkable. With an election looming, the Blair government has made the war on drugs a populist law-and-order priority, once again conflating the taking of drugs with the crime and violence that surrounds them. But it is the war itself that is the problem. The politicians rightly warn that demand will go up if it is legalised. Not good but not the nightmare they summon up. Neither cocaine or heroin is a cancer. In quantities it destroys your nose and is bad for your brain, but it very rarely kills - unlike that other addictive plant we can use legally: tobacco. Nor is it a direct cause of violence, like alcohol. Let's be honest. People try drugs, whether in the form of alcohol or pills, because they are fun. Tens of thousands of UK citizens regularly consume cocaine; hundreds of thousands more use other illegal drugs, completely discrediting the law. In his book Cocaine, Dominic Streatfield quotes the monetarist Milton Friedman: 'I do not think you can eradicate demand. The lesson we have failed to learn is that prohibition never works. It makes things worse not better.' Streatfield quotes the extraordinary statistics involved in fighting cocaine and drugs. Here are a couple: over the past 15 years, the US has spent £150 billion trying to stop its people getting hold of drugs. In Britain and the US almost 20 per cent of the prison population is inside for drugs offences. So what is left? We can muddle on or we can legalise cocaine - and indeed all drugs. This won't solve the social ills of poverty or inequality here or in Latin America but it would remove vast sums of money from the criminal world. We should allow the farmers to grow coca and sell it for decent prices direct to government-controlled factories which can produce a high-quality product. And then it should be sold over the counter from registered chemists such as Boots to anyone over 18 at a reasonable, taxed price that does not encourage a black market. At least then we will know it is pure. Then we must attack demand by using some of the millions saved to invest in education drives that are honest. Look how effective a generation of anti-smoking education has been in bringing the public behind stringent restrictions on smoking in public, but not an outright ban. ... The whole article is worth reading. 9:38:36 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

If we just make the penalties harsher, maybe we'll win this war on drugs... Link IRAQI militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said it killed what it called a drug dealer in the northern city of Mosul and posted a video of the shooting on its website today. The video showed a man standing in front of a banner bearing the group's name and holding packets of pills in his hands. "My name is Hussein Ali Hussein, also known as Hussein Haya, and I sell narcotics," the man said before he was blindfolded and shot in the back of the head. The Sunni Muslim group, which has claimed several attacks and kidnappings in Iraq, has said that the country should be governed by Islamic sharia law and blasted planned national elections this month as an "infidel" practice.  9:26:58 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []