Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Supreme Court gets one right Via TalkLeft The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that if one resident of the house is present and objects, a consent search is not allowed, even if another resident gives consent. Judge Alito did not participate. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas dissented. You can access the syllabus here; Justice Souter's opinion here; Justice John Paul Stevens' concurring opinion here; Justice Stephen G. Breyer's concurring opinion here; Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.'s dissenting opinion here; Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion here; Justice Clarence Thomas's dissenting opinion here; and the oral argument transcript here. Update: Just a reminder. This ruling doesn't help you if you're not home and your spouse/roommate give consent for a search. Which is why it's always a good idea to pick your spouse/roommate carefully, and make sure everybody in the house knows never to consent to a search without a warrant. And if you ask why you should worry if you don't have any drugs, I respond: Can you be absolutely sure that none of your friends lost something out of their pocket that went behind the sofa cushions when they visited you? Are you 100% certain that there isn't a secret compartment or stash in the ceiling left by the previous occupant? Are you looking forward to hiring a lawyer to try to prove you knew nothing about those? 11:25:28 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Oregonian may have created its own meth hype Good investigative journalism by Angela Valdez of the Willamette Week, exposing the "investigative journalism" of the Oregonian. Meth Madness -- How The Oregonian manufactured an epidemic, politicians bought it and you're paying. Via Hit and Run 11:20:20 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Lawsuit! The ACLU and Students for Sensible Drug Policy are filing a federal lawsuit today against the Department of Education and Secretary Margaret Spellings. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the law that strips college financial aid from students with drug convictions. See New York Times article today. More info on the lawsuit is available here. This is being covered over at the DARE Generation Blog, where they are also seeking students who have been denied financial aid to be part of the class action suit. If you're on a campus and would like to help out, go to the lawsuit page and print out some fliers to put up around campus to help them find plaintiffs. 8:38:17 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Jack Shafer takes on drug scare reporting again In Slate: How Not to Report About Meth: Start your article with an anecdote, preferably one about a user who testifies about how methamphetamine destroyed his life. Toss out some statistics to indicate that meth use is growing, even if the squishy numbers don't prove anything. Avoid statistics that cut against your case. Use and reuse the words "problem" and "epidemic" without defining them. Quote law enforcement officers extensively, whether they know what they're talking about or not. Avoid drug history except to make inflammatory comparisons between meth and other drugs. Gather grave comments from public-health authorities but never talk to critics of the drug war who might add an unwanted layer of complexity to your story. Finally, attach a sensationalistic headline, such as "The Next Crack Cocaine? As Meth Use Grows, Officials Fear Region Is Unprepared to Deal With It." That's what the Washington Post did on March 19 in a piece that landed on the front page of the Metro section. Jack does a great job once again at taking down the irresponsible reporting that has so often, over the years, fueled the excesses of the drug war. The result of such reporting is extremely destructive to society (see Len Bias, or crack cocaine), and it's done strictly for ratings. Update: Since I mentioned Len Bias above, it occurred to me that not all my readers may be familiar with the Len Bias story. Here's a good recap of the situation and the result from CounterPunch. On June 19, 1986, Maryland University basketball star Len Bias died from an overdose of cocaine. As Dan Baum put it in his excellent Smoke and Mirrors, The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, "In life, Len Bias was a terrific basketball player. In death he became the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs." It was falsely reported that Bias had smoked crack cocaine the night before his death. In fact he had used powder cocaine and there was no link between this use and the failure of his heart, according to the coroner. Bias had signed with the Boston Celtics and amid Boston's rage and grief Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, a Boston rep, rushed into action. In early July he convened a meeting of the Democratic Party leadership: "Write me some goddamn legislation," he ordered. "All anybody in Boston is talking about is Len Bias. They want blood. If we move fast enough we can get out in front of the White House." In fact the White House was moving pretty fast. Among other things the DEA had been instructed to allow ABC News to accompany it on raids against crackhouses. "Crack is the hottest combat-reporting story to come along since the end of the Vietnam war," the head of the New York office of the DEA exulted. All this fed into congressional frenzy to write tougher laws. House Majority Leader Jim Wright called drug abuse "a menace draining away our economy of some $230 billion this year, slowly rotting away the fabric of our society and seducing and killing our young." Not to be outdone, South Carolina Republican Thomas Arnett proclaimed that "drugs are a threat worse than nuclear warfare or any chemical warfare waged on any battlefield." The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was duly passed. It contained 29 new minimum mandatory sentences. Up until that time in the history of the Republic there had been only 56 mandatory minimum sentences. The new law had a death penalty provision for drug "king pins" and prohibited parole for even minor possession offenses. But the chief focus of the bill was crack cocaine. Congress established a 100-to-1 sentencing ratio between possession of crack and powder cocaine. Under this provision possession of five grams of crack carries a minimum five-year federal prison sentence. The same mandatory minimum is not reached for any amount of powder cocaine under 500 grams. This sentencing disproportion was based on faulty testimony that crack was 50 times as addictive as powdered coke. Congress then doubled this ratio as a so-called "violence penalty." And we've been living with the horrific results of those laws ever since. 8:10:02 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Coca is not Cocaine Bolivian President Evo Morales is going to the United Nations in an attempt to legalize the leaf in the international community. Under the slogan "coca is not cocaine", they are calling for coca-based products, ranging from staples such as tea and bread to cosmetic goods such as shampoo, to be mass-produced and exported from all over South America. But the plant, because of its close link to cocaine, is listed by the UN as a poisonous species, something which Bolivia hopes to change this week as it takes the case for legalising coca to the UN narcotics and crime agency in Vienna. He'll have a tough go of it with that hard-line group, but I wish him luck. Needles to say, the U.S. is not amused. If he succeeds in changing the plant's status by 2008, Washington will not be happy. The US, which spends $1bn a year on its so-called "war on drugs" across South America, says it would be impossible to legalise coca growing in Bolivia without sending cocaine production soaring. US officials express serious concerns that the new wave of leftist Latin American leaders - from Bolivia's President Morales to the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez - are acting in the interests of cocaine barons. Of course, in reality, it's the United States that acts in the interests of cocaine barons. If it wasn't for our government, it wouldn't be so profitable. 7:51:50 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []