Monday, April 3, 2006

Piling On Luis R. Flores of DesMoines, Iowa agreed to help his cousin Felix Calderon. Felix was going to a shipping house to pick up some packages of marijuana that had been shipped to him, and Luis would keep an eye out and let him know by cell phone if he saw any police. Felix accepted the shipment and the police grabbed him. They also grabbed Luis Flores in his truck for being a lookout. Flores pleaded guilty to "aiding and abetting another in possessing a controlled substance" and got probation. A month later the police tried to seize Flores' $30,000 truck, a gun and $2,700 in cash. The courts shut them down, ruling that he had "played a relatively minor role." A month after that the Iowa Revenue department went after Flores for unpaid marijuana taxes on the shipment for which he had merely been lookout. The total bill: $181,677.00 (this would cause him to lose his home). And if he wants to fight the charge, he has to post a bond. This isn't about justice. It's about going out of your way to destroy people. Link 9:56:23 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

New Meth Law at Work So now that purchases of medicines containing pseudoephedrine have to be purchased in the pharmacy, and forms have to be filled out and signed, how will that change enforcement? Well, in Phoenix, the law's been in effect since December, and those purchase log sheets got sent to the police, who dutifully read them to see if anyone was using the system to buy lots of pseudoephedrine, a little at a time. Sure enough, one name and address kept coming up. So the police went out to nab their meth lab. Instead, they found a big family that had been racked by the flu. The members of this family weren't stocking up on pseudoephedrine. They were buying cold medicine. "The way the log reads, the amount purchased can be deceiving," Sherrard says. "All we see is that the mother's name appeared four or five times -- what it doesn't tell you is that she's buying Children's Tylenol." (And if mom had wanted to make meth, five boxes of Children's Tylenol was hardly going to do the trick.) Needless to say, Sherrard says dryly, "we closed that case." Maybe next time, the police should bring some chicken soup with them. 9:11:31 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Drug Czar uses questionable statistics to brag The Drug Czar's latest news release made me laugh out loud. WHITE HOUSE DRUG POLICY BLOG RECIEVES [sic] OVER ONE MILLION HITS Federal Government's Effort to Use New Technology as a Tool for Cultural Change Begins to Make an Impact (Washington, D.C.)--John P. Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), today announced that www.PushingBack.com, the Federal Government's first Web blog, has received over one million hits since going live in March of last year. Pushing Back was created to take advantage of the popularity of "blogging" to convey information about the latest National efforts to reduce the harms that illegal drugs cause to the United States. The blog provides daily updates on the White House "Drug Czar," highlights community efforts that "push back" against drug use, and showcases new research that serves to inform policymakers and anti-drug leaders throughout America. OK, that's interesting. 1 million hits in a year. Well, he knows all about "blogging," and he's got the entire resources of the federal government, so why not? But of course, the actual statistical proof is not given. So let's see how realistic this is, by comparing John's blog with mine. His has been up for a year. Mine for close to three years. So let's see what Google says about links to our blogs. John's blog: About 17 links (including Narcosphere, Stop the Drug War, Drug WarRant, Drug Policy Alliance, and an old parody blog of the ONDCP that I used to write. Pretty much the only pro-drug-war links to the site are from... the actual ONDCP. As far as I can tell, we're the only ones reading him!) My blog: About 4540 links. OK. How about Technorati -- the blog searching site? John's blog: 4 sites currently link with only 18 posts that linked to his blog in the last 298 days (mostly from us, of course). My blog: 813 current links from 214 sites So how many hits have I had? Well, that depends on what statistics you use -- different systems come up with different results, depending on what they count (story pages and archives, etc.) In over 2 1/2 years, SiteMeter says I've gotten 493,225 page hits, and SalonBlogs says that I've gotten 815,617. That's great! In fact, it's pretty incredible for a single-issue blog that only covers drug policy. But of course, the drug czar got a million hits in one year. Right. Come on, John. Show us the proof. Who knows? It could be true. Maybe he sits at home clicking on the page over and over and over and over... 12:05:08 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []