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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, September 17, 2005 |
Finally, some action in the pool chalk frame-ups
The first narcotics informant to be tried in this Dallas case was found guilty yesterday.
An earlier report spelled out how the scam was organized.
Crooked narcotics informants on the Dallas police payroll in 2001 operated like a highly regimented drug gang, planting powdery packages containing worthless billiards chalk on innocent people, witnesses in the trial of one of the informants testified Tuesday.
Each informant had specific duties. Some purchased cones of billiards chalk by the caseload. Others crushed the cones into powder before compressing it into bricks and wrapping it with cellophane to resemble kilo-sized packages of cocaine. Still others took part in the insidious task of selecting innocent people for arrest, witnesses said.
The bigger the buy, the more the police would pay them.
One police officer has already been convicted of lying and several others face a bunch of charges.
Over a year ago, the Dallas News said:
We need to get to the bottom of what happened, and the city has every right to dig and dig until it hits the floor -- no matter how much dust is kicked up in the process.
This case points out one of the problems with the drug war in general. It encourages poor and/or corrupt police work and corruption, and the use of unreliable and/or dishonest informants.
[Thanks to Brian]
10:01:00 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Friday, September 16, 2005 |
U.S. decertifies Venezuela
Link
President Bush has taken Venezuela off his list of allies in the war on drugs, saying that the government of President Hugo Chavez spurned anti-drug cooperation with U.S. officials and fired its effective law enforcement officers.
But the White House waived the cuts in U.S. foreign aid usually attached to the "decertification" so that it can continue to support Venezuelan pro-democracy groups that oppose the leftist Chavez.
Bush's decision is expected to sharply exacerbate already bitter U.S.-Venezuelan relations roiled by Washington's charges that Chavez is promoting subversion around the hemisphere and the Venezuelan president's allegations that Bush is out to kill him.
The U.S. State Department's No. 3 official, Nicholas Burns, announced the Bush administration decision Thursday in New York City around the time Chavez was arriving there for a U.N. summit gathering. The only other nation decertified this year was Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
Accompanying Burns, U.S. drug czar John Walters said that in the past Venezuelan cooperation on drugs was "quite successful and extensive" but that now it seemed that Chavez "no longer wants a productive relationship."
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said of the annual certification process required by U.S. law, "We reject it. ... it's infantile."
This could get ugly. Now I don't claim to be any kind of expert on what's happening in Venezuela, but I do know our own players pretty well.
When Walters talks about a "production relationship," that means one where Venezuela bends over and does whatever the U.S. tells it to, regardless of legality, morality, or effectiveness. Too much of the world has agreed to do just that. It's actually nice to see a country question it.
And Rangel is right -- the certification process is infantile.
I suspect that this has very little to do with an actual concern on the part of the U.S. regarding drug trafficking -- that's just the excuse. The U.S. was using the DEA as a cover to infiltrate and Chavez knew it. And the fact that the U.S. is decertifying without cutting aid for groups opposing Chavez kind of makes it obvious (since decertification is supposed to stop aid).
Could it be that the administration is setting up a scenario where they can justify overthrowing Chavez in order to "protect us from drugs"?
Oh yeah, and don't forget: "Venezuela provides 12 to 15 percent of U.S. oil imports."
7:38:13 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Thursday, September 15, 2005 |
Grow a misdemeanor, give up a home
Link
A Boulder City woman who pleaded no contest to possession of six marijuana plants could lose her house over the case.
Officials in the small town, which prides itself on being the only community in the state that doesn't allow gambling, said their move to seize Cynthia Warren's home is intended to send a message that drugs won't be tolerated in Boulder City.
"In the drug world, this thing is probably nothing," said City Attorney Dave Olsen. "But in a town of 15,000 people where we have one or two children die every year because of controlled substances, it is a big deal to us."
Olsen, who pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor drunken driving charge in 2004, further defended the attempt to take Warren's residence using drug seizure laws, saying police suspected the home was being used for drug dealing.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada said the attempted seizure is disturbing.
"The police ... get to eat what they kill," said Allen Lichtenstein, an ACLU attorney. "They have an incentive to fund themselves through these seizures, and it can be very disproportionate (to the crime). A misdemeanor, yet a fine that takes away the entire property?"
Disgraceful attempt on the part of the city. No sense of shame. No sense of justice. When did we give government the right to take our freedom, or property and our homes all because of a relatively harmless plant?
[Thanks to a local named Michael for first bringing this to my attention.]
Update: Lots more information to get you mad in this article in the Las Vegas Sun.
9:42:39 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005 |
Tom DeLay's trip to la-la land
As reported all over the web today, Tom DeLay officially acknowledged that Republican leadership has absolutely no concept of fiscal conservatism.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget. [...]
Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."
This is so delusional that it really belongs in the Onion, not the Moony Times.
But just in case Tom would like some suggestions for fat to cut (and he couldn't find any in the transportation bill), I've got two words:
Drug War
Let's take the DEA budget and put it toward rebuilding New Orleans.
9:38:42 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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New Orleans stories
 The depressing clean-up effort...In New Orleans's downtown, most of it on higher and drier land, authorities allowed business owners to check their buildings Monday. Dump trucks with claws plucked the growing piles of debris from street corners and the air rumbled with the sound of generators.
"The least we can do is clean up our own streets," Wallace Kimbrough, 43, said as he pried debris out of the storm drain beside his home in the French Quarter. "Hey," he exclaimed, holding up a plastic bag he pulled from the muck. "Somebody lost their marijuana seeds."
[Thanks to Laura]
The helicopters finally arrive to assist New Orleans residents...
...you know what the police were doing here where I live? Flying their helicopters looking for marijuana growing in people's backyards. They swooped on a guy who ran out in his backyard and tried to burn down his four pot plants when he heard their copters coming.
9:15:59 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Guru of Ganja continues fight
Ed Rosenthal is appealing his 1 day and time served federal conviction for medical marijuana.
In case you've forgotten, this was the case where he was not allowed to mention medical marijuana or the fact that the city had deputized him to grow medical marijuana in his court trial. After finding him guilty, the jurors discovered the true facts and were pissed.
Of course, prosecutors are also appealing. They want him to serve 2-5 years.
Should be entertaining.
(More here)
9:07:56 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Drug War Deadlock
Caught this press release about a new book coming out from Hoover Institution Press:
Drug War Deadlock: The Policy Battle Continues (Hoover Institution Press, 2005), edited by Hoover research fellow Laura E. Huggins
It's a collection of articles, OpEds, letters and such by major players on both sides of the drug war debate.
Contributors include Howard Abadinsky, St. John's University; Scott Barbour, Greenhaven Press; Ronald Bayer, Columbia University; William J. Bennett, Heritage Foundation; Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute; Lou Dobbs, CNN; David Duncan, Duncan and Associates; Milton Friedman, Hoover Institution; Bruce D. Glasscock, Plano, Texas, police department; Asa Hutchinson, former administrator of Drug Enforcement Agency; James A. Inciardi, University of Delaware; Bruce D. Johnson, Special Populations Research; Charles Levinthal, Hofstra University; Robert J. MacCoun, University of California, Berkeley; Duane McBride, Andrews University; Joseph D. McNamara, Hoover Institution; Ethan A. Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance; Robert Peterson, attorney; Peter Reuter, University of Maryland; John Jay Rouse, Sacred Heart University, retired; Thomas Szasz, State University of New York Health Science Center; John Stossel, ABC News; Yvonne Terry, University of Michigan; John P. Walters, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; and James Q. Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles.
That's quite a group.
What's really incredible is that you can download all the chapters of the book for free as pdf files at the Hoover Press website.
And there are some classics in there. Milton Friedman rips apart Bennett's Don't Surrender: The drug war worked once. It can again. thesis. And who can forget Lou Dobbs' August 2003 OpEd: A War Worth Fighting [which Ethan Straffin and I enjoyed trashing back then]?
I haven't read it all yet. But it sure seems to have a delightful range of writings from differing viewpoints (and seeing such things side-by-side always seems to highlight the pathetically weak structure of the prohibition arguments).
8:11:29 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Monday, September 12, 2005 |
He certainly is an entertaining 'conspirator'
It's easy to see why Emery pisses off the DEA so much...
Marc Emery took a hit from a joint as his fans smoked and screamed for his freedom in front of the U.S. consulate.
11:21:48 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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The czar is stark naked
Silja J.A. Talvi of In These Times gives us an outstanding article at Alternet:
Smoked Out.
Although the author stumbles slightly with an unsupported lung cancer reference (which I correct in the comments there), this is an outstanding indictment of the war on marijuana (and a delightful read).
A couple of highlights:
In many ways, modern-day government hysteria about the dangers of marijuana is far more distorted and far-fetched than the scare tactics that were employed under Harry J. Anslinger's reign at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.[...]
With all of this knowledge available to the federal government, the extremist position of the ONDCP isn't just nonsensical, it actually sounds more and more like the product of truly paranoid, delusional thinking.
Whatever the reasons behind this kind of thinking, we do know that the ONDCP and successive presidential administrations since Nixon's reign have been deadly serious about supporting this agenda, leaving no room for debate, much less any form of dissent. The extreme extent to which pot (and pot smokers) have been criminalized over the last few decades has had the effect of skewing what marijuana really is and isn't capable of doing to a person. [...]
In an interview with Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly, Mayor Campbell put it as matter-of-frankly as possible: Drug czars are the most ill-informed people in government ... [John Walters] is pushing an agenda that doesn't fit in the real world. He's in denial."
He's right, and the U.S. war on marijuana (and on illicit substances in general) is an abject failure. The emperor is wearing no clothes whatsoever; we should be willing to call his bluff.
Go read the whole thing.
8:53:39 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Supreme Court chatter
As John Roberts' confirmation hearings begin, here are a few Supreme tidbits:
Jack Shafer discusses the late Chief Justice Rehnquist's drug addiction to placidyl.
From Grits for Breakfast, a reminder that Roberts appears to not be much of a friend to the Fourth Amendment.
...during his brief tenure on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He upheld the government's search or seizure every time....
On the other hand, I found this particular section of John Roberts' opening statement intriguing, although I can't say how much it means to us:
Mr. Chairman, when I worked in the Department of Justice, in the office of the solicitor general, it was my job to argue cases for the United States before the Supreme court.
I always found it very moving to stand before the justices and say, "I speak for my country."
But it was after I left the department and began arguing cases against the United States that I fully appreciated the importance of the Supreme Court and our constitutional system.
Here was the United States, the most powerful entity in the world, aligned against my client. And yet, all I had to do was convince the court that I was right on the law and the government was wrong and all that power and might would recede in deference to the rule of law.
That is a remarkable thing.
It is what we mean when we say that we are a government of laws and not of men. It is that rule of law that protects the rights and liberties of all Americans. It is the envy of the world. Because without the rule of law, any rights are meaningless.
Fascinating.
7:31:27 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Sunday, September 11, 2005 |
Painkiller conference at Cato
In the Boston Herald:
``The war on drugs has become a war on sick people and doctors are caught in the cross fire,'' said Harvard-trained Dr. Frank Fisher, a California pain doctor who was slapped with drug and murder charges in 1999 that were later dropped.
Fisher is among a group of experts meeting today at a Washington, D.C., conference to discuss the effects of the Drug Enforcement Administration's ``war on prescription painkillers.''
The government's campaign has doctors ``scared to death'' to prescribe certain painkillers and patients who need them can't find physicians to treat them, said Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, host of the conference.
Go get 'em, Radley!
2:05:49 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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