Monday, May 14, 2007

My arms are getting tired from holding these buckets of water Check out this entire editorial in the Register Citizen (CT) Illegal drug seizures and purchases by police have tripled during the past decade. The dramatic increase indicates there are more illegal drugs on the streets in the Northwest Corner and there are more police officers on the beat to fight the drug local drug infiltration. It takes money to fight the influx of illegal street drugs and local law enforcement is finding ways to raise the funds needed to hire more police personnel. Getting illegal drugs off the streets is a never-ending and costly battle that all communities must fight. So we ratchet up the drug war, and the drug war gets bigger, so we need to spend more money to ratchet up the drug war as it gets bigger. Thank God law enforcement is willing to hire more law enforcement, or we'd be unable to ratchet up the efforts to ratchet up the drug war... Or read this editorial in the Sun-Sentinal (FL) If you thought the global war on terrorism was tough, the war on drugs is next to impossible. [...] Despite upbeat pronouncements in years past, cocaine prices in the United States have actually dropped and its purity increased, making it a bigger, more affordable draw in an attentive market. More than a decade after the number of illegal drug users fell to a 25-year low of 12 million in 1992, it spiked to 20 million users in 2005. Things clearly are not going well for the war on drugs. It's time to retool, or at least rethink, the U.S. strategy, the linchpin of which has been a $5 billion effort to fight the drug industry in Colombia. Ah, sounding a little like they may have a clue? Not so much... Plan Colombia, based on combating the drug problem at its source, was a reasonable tactic. Colombia supplies 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in America and much of the crop abused worldwide. And the effort has had some success. This month, the United Nations estimated that the amount of Colombian land used to grow coca, from which cocaine is derived, dropped by nearly 10 percent last year. But it's not enough. America, and the world, needs a fresh approach because never has the global fight against drugs, which are used to finance terrorist activity, been more essential. BOTTOM LINE: Increase Efforts To Combat Drug Abuse Sigh. OK, even forget the stupidity about the 10% reduction in land cultivated. That's been shown to be a highly suspect figure and really more an indication of increased yields (and increased ability to hide production). But to realize that everything that you're doing is a failure, yet be unable to even notice the solution of drug policy reform perched on your doorstep, has got to be a kind of mental illness. I've said this before, but I'm bringing it out again... Some days it feels like I'm watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I'm standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I'm crazy. Oh, and by the way... You know how they ratcheted up the war in Mexico big time? Troops, arrests, battles. That'll force the drug criminals to cease operations, right? Maybe in bizarro world, but not on earth. Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs. [...] Many Mexicans fear even the army is outgunned. [...] Seizures at the U.S. border indicate the flow of drugs north may actually be increasing - 20 percent more cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana has been seized in the past six months, compared with the same period a year earlier. The drug war: A blend of depraved venality and gross incompetence wrapped up in the denial of reality and passed off as unimpeachable virtue. 8:55:26 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

History lesson in Hawaii Hawaii has been going overboard in its drug war zeal -- the most recent addition being random suspicionless drug tests for all teachers. Rich Figel has a nice history lesson and challenge in Sunday's Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He talks about the parallels to alcohol prohibition: ...we're committing the same mistakes all over again. During the past 30 years, hundreds of billions of your tax dollars have been spent in a futile strategy that has backfired. Just as Prohibition created conditions for moonshiners, bootleggers and the mob to prosper, the War on Drugs has only benefited organized crime, drug dealers and prison contractors. As long as the profit motive exists for black market goods, there will be suppliers who will step forward to fill the need. and then he issues a challenge: Let's start an island-wide discussion about dealing realistically with our drug problem. In future columns, I'll be writing in more detail about the history of drug use in the United States, the current state of affairs and alternatives worth considering. I'm inviting members of government, law enforcement, the prison system and addiction experts to share their views. I want you to tell us what you think. There are no easy solutions. But I believe the majority of Americans are pragmatic people, and once we get past certain emotional issues, we're capable of finding common ground. Or would you rather let Big Brother call the shots? Because that's where we're heading, unless we change course. I'll be very interested to see what happens. 9:49:03 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

More fringe religious follies Having been raised as the son of a minister (and therefore spending a lot of time considering the fundamental compassionate roots of Christianity), I got a bit of a sad chuckle out of this one (via Jim Henley, via Crooked Timber). If you're unfamiliar with the new phenomenon of Conservapedia (billed as the answer to the "liberal" Wikipedia), it can be quite... bizarre. This essay about the Adultress Story is a prime example. The story of Jesus saying "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" is determined to not be authentic in the Bible, primarily because it interferes with people's desire for bloodthirsty retribution. Amid this scholarship [denying its authenticity], why is the emphasis on this passage increasing? The answer lies in its liberal message: do not criticize or punish immoral conduct unless you are perfect yourself. But one need not be perfect before he can recognize and punish wrongdoing in himself and others. Civilized society may not depend on stoning to deter immoral crimes, but it does depend on retribution enforced by people who are themselves sinners. In the post below, the pope talked about divine retribution. These people are looking for divine allowance to practice personal and societal retribution on those who violate their definition of moral behavior, regardless of the flaws of those imposing the punishment. Christianity and retribution. Not the way I remember it. But it's what you see in the sado-moralism of many of the drug warriors. Treatment more cost-effective than incarceration? Who cares! We want retribution. Punishment. Criminalization. Prisons. We want retribution. Death from dirty needles and tainted drugs. We want retribution. Doors smashed in the middle of the night. (But we're not including our own "youthful indiscretions," of course.) William Bennett doesn't want Jesus telling him not to cast stones when he has a gambling problem himself. Mark Souder doesn't want anything to put a downer on his psycho-sexual punishment fantasies. Ah, yes. The new Christianity. "Blessed are those who inflict punishment on others for petty moral crimes, for they shall feel smug." 9:37:19 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []