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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, November 18, 2006 |
Beyond Prohibition: What does sensible drug policy look like? (SSDP)
The final plenary session of the day.
Eric Sterling, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
Many reformers have a problem with the word "decriminalization." However, from his perspective, the definition of decriminalization has potentially undergone some change.
Original: Decriminalization means a minor sanction, users won't be punished by we'll still go after the traffickers. That doesn't make sense.
However, new thought:
Using the word "legalization" puts the burden on the legalizer to define how that will be accomplished.
But new version of "decriminalization" puts burden of proof on the status quo to answer: Why should the state punish drug use? What in the conduct of drug users merits punishment?
Interesting point.
Drug use is a right. It's hard to imagine anything more intimate than the control of our own neurotransmitters. ...
If we want to make a big difference, we need to convince business that drug prohibition hurts their bottom line.
His proposals for 'after prohibition':
- Marijuana -- growing license similar to getting a hunting license.
- Psychedelics -- Psychadelic trip leaders who are insured and licensed professionals
- Other drugs -- a Consulting Pharmacist (just like getting advice from a stockbroker) who would advise people on the effects, interactions with other things you might be doing. Might advise you to use a different drug based on what you want to do.
- Treatment on demand. You should be able to get treatment as easily as ordering a pizza.
- Parents and teachers should be able to tell you the truth.
- There will be challenges -- we cannot say for certain what the market will look like, so we need to be able to respond and change.
Marsha Rosenbaum, Drug Policy Alliance
The drug prevention industry is impossible to penetrate. It's a depressing situation. After all the proof, DARE is still out there.
Marsha and DPA has worked on trying to reach parents and get them the real information. That has been successful.
Marsha wrote this letter to her son when he entered High School eight years ago. She reported that two days ago, her son wrote a letter to her about how he took her advice...
It's a beautiful letter and I hope you'll get a chance to read it sometime. No way I could type fast enough to get it to you now. I just needed to listen. It's a powerful letter that vindicates her initial letter to him.
Here's a couple of pamphlets that you might want to get:
Marsha then showed a video upFront: A Reality-Based Approach to Drug Education about a program at Oakland High School -- a fact-based/not fear-based program with real information. What a notion! (Also see UpFrontPrograms.org.)
Nick Gillespie, Reason Magazine
"Drug war screws with everything it touches and it touches everything."
Why are kids being taken away from math and science to be talked to about drugs at all?
We need to create a post-prohibitionist mindset.
For 50 years, everything in America was geared and oriented to the cold war. From the olympics to chess. America became like the Soviet Union to defeat it.
Today, the prohibitionist mindset infuses everything in our lives Tour de France, baseball, foreign policy, education, ... You can't even take a piss in this country without being told "Just say No to drugs" at the bottom of the urinal.
His approach:
Smarter to regulate all drugs (including prescription drugs) something like beer and alcohol.
We need to move to a post-prohibitionist mindset.
We need to fight the drug war like the allies fought World War II. Everywhere and all the time. We need to be making moral, fiscal and every other argument.
We need to show the cost benefit ratio, including the fact that physical pleasure needs to be added to the calculation.
We have prisons dotting this country like concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
It would be hard to swing a dead bratwurst without hitting some kind of camp. And its true hear now with prisons and drug offenders.
We need to publicize the fact that the drug war is being fought at all times in all corners. And the drug war may be the forever war, because it's a basic human impulse to alter your consciousness. Drugs are one of the tools of choice in that.
We'll have to go beyond the cost-benefit ration analysis and move beyond that. Those of us who use drugs have to fundamentally alter the way we talk about drugs. Individuals have more power to remake themselves than ever before in human history.
It's easier to be gay today than it was in 1940, 1950, 1960, etc. The same thing will be true with being a drug user.
We need to start re-conceiving the idea of drugs -- collapse the arbitrary differences -- as one tool toward becoming what we want to become. Drugs are like exercise and fashion and surgery....
We will need to stop imbuing inanimate objects with super-human powers.
The end of the war starts in our head.
We must take seriously the credo of the Whole Earth Catalog: "We are as Gods and we might as well get good at it."
Rachel Kurtz, King County Bar Association
She talked about the wonderful work that KCBA has done. See their reports at King County Bar Association, including Effective Drug Control: Toward a New Legal Framework
We need to come up with even more alternatives to the drug war -- She encouraged students to do more research in this area.
6:36:49 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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I finally get to meet all these people!
Scott Morgan (FlexYourRights), Radley Balko (Agitator and Reason), Nick Gillespie (Reason), Pete Guither (DrugWarRant)
Gee, I wonder if Mark Kleiman is going to want a picture with me?
[Update: He shook my hand, but was clearly not pleased to meet me, and laid in to me pretty severely for my accusations regarding his scholarship. When I said I have admired his critiques of prohibition, but have still been waiting for him to articulate his objections to legalization, he said that I should look at his paper in 1992 in Daedalus. So I have tracked it down and ordered a copy -- I promised him that I would read it and respond and I will do so as soon as I get it.]
3:43:17 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Watchdogs or Lapdogs? Media Coverage of the War on Drugs (SSDP)
The mid-day plenary featured Bill Press (MSNBC), Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune) and was moderated by Ryan Grim (Capitol Leader and Slate.com).
Clarence Page: The #1 sin in journalism is being inaccurate. The #2 sin is being dull. He defends the fact that the press often treats drugs and the drug war as a funny thing on that basis.
Bill Press thinks reporters are afraid to talk about drugs, partly because they are afraid they'll lose their jobs or reveal to much about their past. He talked about his own conversion...
I discovered I'm a conservative -- I was opposed to big government programs that wasted a lot of taxpayer dollars and didn't accomplish anything.
Clarence Page was interested in Kris Krane's comment about the fact that the media reports on "drug-related" crime and not "prohibition-related" crime. I think he realized that there was a framing issue in the media. I get the impression that Page is not with us fully, but dipping his toes in the water. He wants a change, but isn't sure how much, nor has he fully accommodated in his mind all the aspects of drug policy reform.
Bill Press called Bob Novak "The Prince of Darkness"
Bill Press (back to framing): Gingrich, during the Republican takeover, came up with lists of words to use to frame the issue. He mentioned some good words that we use:
- Reform
- Fiscal Responsibility
- Decriminalization (as opposed to "legalization")
- State's Rights
Both said that medical marijuana is the right approach to softening public opinion. So is the financial aid issue that SSDP has been pursuing. Both seemed to think that the incremental approach is the only way that it'll work.
Reach out, inform, and educate the media. Don't just complain about them. Make your case. Contact them. Meet with editorial boards. It's easier if you're a group, but it's essential.
Ryan Grim gave props to Tom Angell of SSDP for his persistence in getting press releases out and keeping contact with the media. (Notes that it's not just about the release, but the follow-up, and also getting some exclusivity.) Create personal interaction with the media.
Clarence Page: "If we're going to have a Drug Czar who's going to be dishonest, then there's no point in having a Drug Czar."
1:57:06 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Blogging from the Conference, part 1
Today's activities are underway at the Students for Sensible Drug Policy conference. I'm going to try to live blog in sections throughout the weekend, so bear with me if some of this is sketchy or paraphrased. It's all happening too fast to do much editing and re-writes!
Before the start of the opening session, I had the opportunity to meet Howard Woolridge of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. What a ball of fire! You may have heard of his horseback rides across the country wearing a T-shirt saying "Cops Say Legalize Drugs -- Ask Me Why." He's great fun to talk with and is wonderfully involved in
Opening plenary session began with a very stirring charge by SSDP Executive Director Kris Krane, who established the SSDP's student activism as the anti-war movement of this generation, and rightly mentioned the drug war as being the underlying source of everything else from the Patriot Act to other abuses in the war on terror.
The opening panel included Steph Sherer, Executive Director, Americans for Safe Access,
Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and Ethan Nadelmann, Founder, Drug Policy Alliance.
All were great -- Ethan gave a very powerful speech, including defining the movement (paraphrased)
We care about racial justice, about the constitution, about the U.S. being a responsible member of the world, about not leading the world in incarceration. We are the people who love drugs, who hate drugs and who don't give a damn about drugs, but we all believe that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with drugs.
Ethan talked about how he sees that the war on drugs is morphing -- drug testing, urine testing, air testing, room testing, GPS bracelets -- toward a total surveillance society. With prison costs, instead of locking them up, he suggested that we'll be using surveillance -- getting people accustomed to losing little bits of freedom.
The beginnings of a totalitarian society.
He talked about the recent Zogby survery that found 45% of Americans open to the possibility of banning cigarettes, and the disturbing fact that the majority of young people agreed (more than fundamentalists). He talked about how the younger generation has to be smart and not become the creators of the next prohibition movement.
We want policy that is dealing with all substances with maturity and wisdom, not prohibition and idiocy.
Rob Kampia couldn't be there, Aaron Houston, Director of Government Relations, with the Marijuana Policy Project, gave a updates, including the notion that the Hinchey Amendment is in closer reach after the last election.
12:59:53 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Hairy chests and other body parts
I found this article amusing: Home Office chided over 'hairy chest' policy
A LEADING chief constable attacked the Government's "hairy chest" approach to law and order yesterday after Tony Blair announced a series of Home Office measures to tackle crime.
Terry Grange criticised the constant introduction of new legislation which, he said, was done without planned thinking and was based largely on the need to respond to critics.
Boy, if that isn't a description of politicians' approach to crime legislation in general!
Of course, you might as well call it the "My dick is bigger than yours" approach, which is immediately countered by "No, I've got a big one, too." It's impossible to be smart on drugs or crime when the brain has been shut off and the members of Congress are busy comparing... members.
7:37:19 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Good news in California
This is only a preliminary ruling, a California Superior Court Judge has slapped down three counties that were trying to back out of medical marijuana. San Diego, San Bernardino and Merced counties were trying to buck the voters and claim that they didn't have to allow medical marijuana because the state law conflicted with federal law.
The preliminary ruling indicated that the state law could coexist with the federal prohibition, which means that the counties must obey the state law.
7:25:17 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Robert's Sharpe
I always enjoy reading his letters. Here's one today in the Oregon Statesman Journal.
We're not doing the Colombian people any favors by funding civil war. Nor are Americans being protected from drugs.
Destroy the Colombian coca crop and production will boom in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Destroy every last plant in South America and domestic methamphetamine production will increase to meet the demand for cocaine-like drugs.
The self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are seemingly incapable of applying basic economic principles to drug policy. Instead of waging a futile supply-side drug war abroad, we should be funding cost-effective drug treatment here at home. [emphasis added]
7:15:07 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Friday, November 17, 2006 |
Does your home smell?
James Kilpatrick has an OpEd on the Supreme Court case of Florida v. Rabb. This should be an interesting 4th Amendment case -- simply boils down to whether the state can use a dog to sniff the outside of your house and based on what the dog has to say, then search your house.
This case will give the Supremes a chance to show whether they really believe in the sanctity of the home as they play off cases like Kyllo (can't use heat imaging devices on homes) with cases like Caballes (dog sniff OK on cars even without other suspicion). The court has already pretty much given up on car ownership rights -- we'll have to see what happens with your home.
A loss on this one would be devastating -- The police would be able to take a dog (and note that drug-sniffing dogs are not particularly reliable in their results) to any home and get it to "point," and you'd be subject to a full search of your home.
[Thanks, Bill]
12:45:32 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Students for Sensible Drug Policy
I'm off to Washington, DC to the SSDP conference, and I'll be blogging from there as I get a chance. Just look at this amazing line-up -- I'm going to have some really tough choices to make in the break-out sessions.
Update: Of course, the first step will be to actually get a working plane out of here. I'm getting to know the Bloomington, Illinois airport a little more than I planned.
7:44:01 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Thursday, November 16, 2006 |
Milton Friedman
Link
An Open Letter to Bill Bennett
by Milton Friedman, April 1990
In Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish.
You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.
Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.
Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and Drugs." The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition.
Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, "crack" would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built.
Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier.
Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable.
Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.
This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.
Milton Friedman passed away today at the age of 94.
5:57:19 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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The Debate
I thought last night's debate went exceptionally well. The crowd really seemed to enjoy it, and both debaters did a good job. Unfortunately as moderator, I had to insure an even playing field and couldn't get into it myself -- even though there were times that I was absolutely itching to do so. The most I could do is force someone to a more direct answer if they were dodging the question (which I did a few times).
Kudos to William Otis, who flew out from Washington to take part in the debate. He is Counselor to the Administrator of the DEA -- a political appointment who provides advice to Karen Tandy. He was quite nice and seemed sincere in his efforts -- a combination of really believing a lot of what he said (partly due to a lack of detailed knowledge or understanding), along with repeating the DEA line in a number of areas (even though his own personal preferences might not go that far).
I was impressed by the fact that Otis was open to correction of factual errors in his information. During the debate, he said that Marinol did not cause a person to get high. When I told him that was incorrect, he said he'd be happy to look that up and change what he said in the future (Marinol's site doesn't specifically say that it gets you high but that the effects included "dizziness, feelings of exaggerated happiness, paranoid reaction, drowsiness, and thinking abnormally.") Mr. Otis also several times mentioned the dangers of marijuana and driving, citing a Memphis "study" that has been widely rejected for its methodology. When I brought this up after the debate, he agreed to investigate it further.
Some of the more outrageous moments in the debate included the following claims by William Otis
- Drug dealers would benefit from legalization.
- There is no difference between "use" and "abuse" for illegal narcotics.
Mostly I felt that Mr. Otis could benefit from a lot more actual information. I think that he lives in a bit of a propaganda bubble and needs to read more about the drug war (although that might make it more difficult for him to do his job). I was surprised to learn, for example, that he was unaware that President Bush had actually campaigned in 2000 on letting the states choose regarding medical marijuana.
Bryan Brickner, representing the other side, had a delightful approach -- not so much focusing on lots of details (although he had them), but rather painting a picture -- of individual freedom and the promise of America, and the marvelous life of marijuana user Louis Armstrong, and the shattering of America's promise through the non-sensical arrest and incarceration of people for... using drugs. There were tons of points that I wanted him to cover that he didn't, and yet he was keeping the message clear and clean, which was more important. Sometimes you can't give people all your points or you overwhelm them -- something that Bryan seemed to understand well.
Bryan Brickner was the clear winner in my mind (not only on style, but on actual substance).
All in all, a great experience. A big thanks to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Federalist Society and the Coalition of Student-Professionals for Social Change (and Shaleen).
9:10:29 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Wednesday, November 15, 2006 |
Uncle Sam, keep out
Glenn Greenwald has an interesting article at Salon this morning. While the drug war is never mentioned in it, it would certainly be implied in the premise.
It's a suggestion to the Democrats that they can expand their strength, particularly in the interior Western regions, by appealing to certain libertarian principles.
No political party can be everything to everyone. As Republicans are forced to rely more and more on their base of white Southern evangelicals, they will be increasingly viewed as the party of intrusive governmental control.
In the process, the Democrats have the chance to become the party that stands for the right of adults to make decisions about their own lives free of moralistic governmental interference and regulation. Those who cast their votes based principally on such libertarian sentiments -- driven by the belief that the government should, to the greatest extent possible, stay out of their lives -- will view the Democratic Party as the far more attractive choice.
I don't know if the Democratic Party is capable of going there, but it certainly is an interesting thought, and perhaps political self-interest is an argument to use with Democrats.
8:19:54 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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How much jail time do you get if you're acquitted?
Sound like a trick question? Read Radley's post over at Hit and Run.
Courtesy of the drug war comes the concept of using crimes for which you've been acquitted as part of the sentencing formula.
From a U.S. District Court in Virginia (and the whole thing is a pretty disturbing read):
From the public's perspective, most people would be shocked to find out that even United States citizens can be (and routinely are) punished for crimes of which they were acquitted.
No kidding. I knew the 6th Amendment was in trouble, but did not realize that the Supreme Court had authorized sentencing based on acquitted charges.
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Both Radley Balko and I will be at the SSDP National Conference this weekend. I've known Radley online for some time, but am looking forward to meeting him in person for the first time. I'm also looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of drug policy reformers and Drug WarRant readers this weekend. Hope to see you there. Please introduce yourself to me.
Also, a reminder that I will be moderating a debate at 6 pm tonight in Urbana/Champaign, Illinois. Should be fun.
1:09:21 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Tuesday, November 14, 2006 |
Drug War... Successes... Around the World
Mexico:
The death toll in Mexico's drug war has surpassed 2,000 this year, with a newspaper editor found dead in the resort city of Zihuatanejo and a police commander assassinated in Tijuana apparently among the latest victims, according to news reports.
Colombia:
Drug war in Colombian port leaves 305 dead this year
BUENAVENTURA, Colombia - Six people were shot to death and six others were injured by a roadside bomb this weekend in Buenaventura, where the soaring murder rate this year is making the port city one of Colombia's top killing fields, officials said on Sunday.
Thailand:
BANGKOK, Nov 14 (TNA) - Justice Ministry officials are now collecting evidence related to the extra-judicial killings of some 2,500 people during the Thaksin government's war on drugs campaign, said a senior
official of the ministry.
Good thing drugs are illegal. Sure, thousands of people are dying, but at least we've stopped people from doing something that might cause them to sit for long periods on Pete's couch.
Except, of course, that we haven't.
The reality is that all those people have died so that the politicians and the DEA can have their drug war. Hope they're enjoying it.
9:40:43 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Cocaine Laws
Eric Sterling's OpEd in the Los Angeles Times yesterday is a must-read.
He talks about the problems of our cocaine sentencing laws with the authority (and the mea culpas) of one who helped write them.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- the independent agency that gives sentencing guidelines to federal judges and advises Congress -- will hold hearings on this issue. If logic prevails, in the next Congress we may finally see an end to one of the most unjust laws passed in recent memory. And that might correct the biggest mistake of my professional life.
The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight the major recommendation for the federal law that he gives:
Congress should do what it tried to do in 1986 -- make the Justice Department focus exclusively on high-level cases because state and local law enforcement cannot. There are three elements to fix the problem: Raise the quantity triggers for all drugs to realistic levels for high-level traffickers, such as 50 or 100 kilos of cocaine, and end the crack/powder imbalance; Require the attorney general to approve prosecution of any case involving less than 50 kilos of cocaine; Analyze federal drug cases district by district to identify agents and prosecutors who waste their time and our money. If only high-level dealers were being prosecuted by the feds, no one would have cause to complain about the race of the defendants.
Update: TalkLeft has updates on the hearings here and here. It's good to have Jeralyn back focusing on criminal justice issues.
8:55:14 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Monday, November 13, 2006 |
Tough Crowd
Well, I took on my biggest challenge to date. The Golden K Kiwanis Club in Quincy, Illinois is a great bunch of retired businessmen, but not what you might consider your easiest target group for promoting drug policy reform. And I went all out -- full drug legalization.
I thought it went very well -- there was some resistant body language and I believe a few may have been a bit unhappy that I was there (and may give my dad a hard time for inviting me), but there were some good questions, and a number of people came up afterward with positive comments -- including a retired physician who said he was 100% with me, someone else who wanted sources to read more, and some who appeared not to be ready to go the whole way, but agreed that the current drug war wasn't making sense and that they were willing to consider other options.
It was also great to meet a Drug WarRant fan who lives in the Quincy area and managed to get an invite to the event.
All in all, a wonderful experience. I'm looking forward to the rest of this busy week.
7:08:59 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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Sunday, November 12, 2006 |
Chicago SunTimes OpEd favors Marijuana Legalization
Monroe Anderson, in today's Chicago Sun-Times, has It's time to legalize marijuana in Illinois.
In the past year, the pot prohibition has produced record devil-weed arrests and a bumper crop of American POWs in our nation's prisons. In 2005, there 786,545 marijuana arrests -- 696,074 just for possession. About 34,000 state and 11,000 federal inmates are incarcerated for marijuana offenses. We're spending $1 billion a year to put them there and another $8 billion a year to keep them there.
We could regulate, license and tax marijuana. Instead we blow billions on busting and jailing peaceful citizens from whom we could collect millions in tax revenue -- much like we do with alcohol.
For our nation's lawmakers to not grasp such a commonsense approach, you've got to wonder what they've been smoking.
Nice.
9:38:01 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
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