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Drug WarRant
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Saturday, January 27, 2007 |
Murder and Marijuana both start with the letter M
We've been subjected to some pretty extraordinary moronity in recent days.
Let's start with Right Wing News' John Hawkins writing in Human Events Online: In Defense of the Drug War. At first I was interested because I thought "Hey, maybe this will be an actual thoughtful attempt to be pro-drug war that will be interesting to debunk." But no. Tired old fallacies and unsupported false assumptions.
And the kickers in the article that really make it not worth the bother...
- Hawkins refers to some specific data regarding alcohol prohibition, and uses as his source... a book by Ann Coulter. How stupid is that? That's like me giving statistics on relative dependency rates of various drugs and quoting the characters that Cheech and Chong play in Up In Smoke as the source!
- Hawkins plays the "murder" card. In "rebutting" the legalizers' call for not jailing so many people, he notes that we're not going to win the war on murder, robbery and rape, either. This is that delightful combination of straw man, slippery slope, and reductio ad absurdum fallacies (which also occur elsewhere in Hawkins' piece).
The murder nonsense also showed up in the Wichita Eagle, where there was an outstanding OpEd by Jack Cole of LEAP: War on drugs has been a whopper of a failure on Tuesday, which was followed by a "rebuttal" yesterday (Legalization would be a mistake) by U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren, who spews the same fallacious propaganda line:
Should we legalize murder because we've been fighting it since Cain killed Abel, yet murder persists? Should we decriminalize sexual assault, because the billions we have poured into eradicating it could have been better spent by treating the effects "as a medical problem"?
Now anybody who has at least a 12th grade education knows that this argument is intellectually dishonest, yet we continue to hear it from people who should know better. This leads me to believe that those who say it:
- Know better, but are willfully attempting to deceive the public, or
- Are so blinded by their hatred of drugs, drug users or the class/social status/political viewpoint/race of people who use drugs, that they are unable to see the faults in their own arguments.
Those in the first category I can do nothing about, other than hope that one day their fate will be that of the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
So let me try a simple exercise for those in the second category who are too blinded for their hatred for all things drug-related...
Imagine, if you will, that through some strange and irrational set of circumstances, the wearing of gloves on your hands has been made illegal (maybe it was to prevent those who had been masturbating from hiding the hair that grew on the palms of their hands -- who knows why these laws get passed sometimes). Now in many parts of the country it gets cold, and people would wear gloves to stay warm regardless of the law, and some of them would get caught and put in jail. This had no real effect on the numbers of people wearing gloves (or masturbating, for that matter). So perhaps you suggested that wearing gloves should be made legal -- that we should stop filling jails with people who were merely trying to keep their hands warm. But some ignorant moron says "Everyone knows we shouldn't legalize murder, so we shouldn't legalize glove-wearing either."
Do you understand how stupid that sounds?
Now there are plenty of other differences between Murder and Marijuana, including the notion of victim, and there is also the factor to be considered of the actual effective purposes of, and reasons for, enforcement and incarceration (the discussion of which has been unfortunately AWOL in this country in recent years). But ultimately, those don't really matter in this sense, because even the notion of analogizing the legalization of drugs and the legalization of murder is bereft of logic.
And as we speak of the lack of logic, let us now turn to one who should have excellent intellectual training. Someone who has gone to law school and become a Judge, and even teaches law and finance at a university. Someone like Timothy G. Hicks.
Timothy Hicks was the judge for a sordid case involving two men (Sibson and Weissert) who were involved in selling marijuana. Although the case had many complexities, apparently Weissert hired a couple of men to steal the drugs and money from Sibson, and in the process, Sibson was killed in his home. Anyone seeing this story would see a tale of murder and home invasion, resulting from criminal greed.
But not the Honorable Timothy G. Hicks. According to the Muskegon Chronicle:
Before sentencing Weissert, Hicks addressed what he called a series of "urban myths."
"Urban myth number one" is that "drug use is a victimless crime," Hicks said from the bench. "Here we have orphaned children, devastated families."
Myth number two: " 'It's only marijuana,' " Hicks said. "Marijuana is as evil as the rest of this stuff. ... Marijuana indirectly caused all the carnage." [...]
Now fortunately Phillip Smith at Stop the Drug War has saved me the time of having to stoop to responding to this reprehensible sewage, and has already made many of the points that immediately jumped out in my mind...
The robbers went after the marijuana dealer because there were valuable items they could take. Would the judge have railed against alcohol if someone had been murdered in a liquor store robbery? [...]
I wonder if the judge would call cold, hard cash "evil" because someone robbed an armored car to steal some. [...]
I wouldn't be surprised if he blamed a woman being attractive as a cause of her own rape. And you know, I've often heard that escaping criminals have committed murder to avoid being taken before a judge. Wouldn't that make the judge indirectly to blame for the murder? (It makes as much logical non-sense as Hicks' position). This man has no business practicing law or teaching students.
It bothers and disturbs me that I had to even write this post. And I find it somewhat ironic that those who write in favor of prohibition always seem not to have full mental acuity, and you find the drug legalizers appealing to intellectual reason and facts.
Marijuana. Murder. Not the same. One is the premeditated killing of another human being, and the other is a leafy plant.
Update: If you really want to be depressed, check out some of the ignorant rantings in the massive comments section of Hawkins' blog entry.
2nd Update: Several fiskings of the Hawkins nonsense -- from the conservative xrlq: This Is Your Brain on Drug Wars. Any Questions?, from Liberty Papers: A Lame Defense of the Drug War, and from Walter in Denver Dumbest Thing I've Read Today.
On the other hand, RightLinx links approvingly to Hawkins, with a moronic addition:
If society feels that making a substance illegal is in its best interest, it should have the freedom to do so.
What a horrendous use of the word "freedom."
1:43:24 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Friday, January 26, 2007 |
Some outstanding medical marijuana reading
 Garden of Weedin' -- this is a really fascinating article by Zach Dundas about the medical marijuana in Oregon. It's uplifting, but it also makes you realize just how much time we've lost in the potential advancements and research that could be happening in medical marijuana.
Let Them Have Their Pot by Manuel S. Klausner in the Los Angeles Times.
Medical Marijuana: Justice goes awry - editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
8:32:49 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Thursday, January 25, 2007 |
Little things that make me smile
About two years ago, former ONDCP staffer and con-artist Andrea Barthwell put together a series of lectures in Illinois to attack our medical marijuana efforts. I was able to catch her falsifying sponsorship information, which marked essentially the end of the lecture series. Today, the original IllinoisMarijuanaLectures.org website, apparently being allowed to die through expiration, became a spam advertising page.
11:27:57 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Afghanistan apparently doesn't want to be run by John Walters
Link
Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai decided against a Colombia-style program to spray this country's heroin-producing poppies after the Cabinet worried herbicide would hurt legitimate crops, animals and humans, officials said Thursday.
Turns out Canada's not too thrilled about it either...
A senior State Department official says troops from NATO nations must provide security for opium crop-eradication projects, including new plans for chemical spraying of poppy fields -- which is something Canada rejects. [...]
Plowing up poppy fields angers Afghan farmers who rely on the crops for their livelihood, and fosters a climate of grievance that helps the Taliban in their recruiting efforts.
Canadian commanders in Kandahar have said that any direct involvement by their troops in eradication programs would put their soldiers at risk, and impede their efforts to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people.
Anybody else? The UK has some concerns...
THE Afghan government is to launch a poppy eradication campaign in Helmand province which UK military commanders fear will antagonise farmers and drive them into the arms of the Taliban. [...]
British commanders have distanced themselves from the initiative, but still fear a backlash against the 5200-strong UK garrison because the Kabul authorities have ruled out compensation for crops.
One said: "The whole thing is being driven by the US, which has become impatient with the lack of progress in cutting poppy cultivation and opium production.
"Our concern is that local villagers tend not to differentiate greatly between armed and uniformed strangers sent by their own government and armed and uniformed strangers from abroad. All they can see is someone in authority destroying their livelihood.
"When that happens, everyone perceived to be involved becomes a target."
Could it be that other countries are beginning to understand that U.S. drug policy is not only moronic, but is likely to get them killed?
10:48:18 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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NIDA fails to propagandize Wikipedia
Ryan Grim at The Politico reports on the efforts of the National Institute on Drug Abuse to remove the Wikipedia information about them that is controversial, and replace it with glowing propaganda.
In late August, someone with an IP address that originated from the National Institutes of Health drastically edited the Wikipedia entry for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which operates within NIH. Wikipedia determined the edit to be vandalism and automatically changed the definition back to the original. On Sept. 18, the NIH vandal returned, according to a history of the site's edits posted by Wikipedia. This time, the definition was gradually changed, presumably to avoid the vandalism detector.
NIDA spokeswoman Dorie Hightower confirmed that her agency was behind the editing. She said in an e-mail that the definition was changed "to reflect the science."
A little more than science-reflecting was done to the site. Gone first was the "Controversial research" section that included comments critical of NIDA. Next went the section on the NIDA-sponsored program that grows marijuana for research and medical purposes. The next slice of the federal editor's knife left all outside references on the cutting-room floor, replaced with links to government Web sites.
One of the things they cut, by the way, was a link to Drug WarRant that was on the page.
Today, much of the original material is back up -- Wikipedia doesn't react well to censorship.
If you'd like to see what the page looked like at various stages, you can actually see its history (scroll down on each page past the two columns of change indications to see the look and content of the page at that time).
- Page after NIDA's first blatant attempt to wipe it clean
- Page restored as it was
- Page at one point when Drug WarRant was listed as an outside resource
- Page after later gradual attempt to turn it into a pro-NIDA propaganda page.
- Page as it currently exists (which, as of this moment, even includes a section with links to today's articles regarding NIDA's attempt to take over the page.)
They saw an opportunity. Nobody wants to go to the drug warrior sites and read their propaganda, so they decided to make Wikipedia's entry over in the way they wished. It doesn't work that way.
[Thanks, Tom]
5:09:19 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Open Thread
Grits for Breakfast notes that, in Texas, a conservative GOP senator who is a medical doctor has filed a bill authorizing local governments to implement needle exchange programs. It's going to be a tricky one for the prohibitionists. I wonder how they'll try to demonize him?
Blame the Drug War has been following the Yorkton vigilante case in Canada, where a father went over to his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend's house and shot and killed him. Start here, then here.
The ONDCP yesterday claims that legal opium from Afghanistan can't work because there's an oversupply of opium based products. But on the same day...
Afghanistan's opium poppies should be used to alleviate a shortage of painkillers in the NHS, the British Medical Association has said. [...] Diamorphine, which is derived from opium poppies and which is also known as heroin, is used to relieve pain after operations. But there is a critical shortage of the drug in Britain, forcing doctors to use more expensive and less effective alternatives.
Phillip Smith has more.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation blog has been doing an outstanding job of following the recent political maneuverings regarding drug policy in the UK. Their most recent post discusses the ways in which the policy of prescribing addictive drugs for the purpose of reducing crime is being... considered.
9:33:14 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
Obligatory SOTU post
"Did you know that the State of the Union Address and Dark Side of the Moon synch up perfectly?"
- Jon Stewart
What a buzz kill that would be.
9:18:09 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Economics and the Drug War
An interesting post from last week over at Marginal Revolution about a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Political Economy on how elasticity affects the market for illegal goods.
In an important new study, world-renowned economists--including a Nobel Prize winner and a MacArthur "genius"--argue that when demand for a good is inelastic, the cost of making consumption illegal exceeds the gain. [...] The authors demonstrate how the elasticity of demand is crucial to understanding the effects of punishment on suppliers. [...]
"This analysis...helps us understand why the War on Drugs has been so difficult to win...why efforts to reduce the supply of drugs leads to violence and greater power to street gangs and drug cartels," conclude the authors. "The answer lies in the basic theory of enforcement developed in this paper."
A good discussion in comments at Marginal Revolution, with most of the best comments coming from daksya.
Update: Apparently, the year recently became 2007, so this January 2006 post is actually a year old, not a week. Still, the points are valid, just more aged and wise...
8:42:10 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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One last push for the laptop
 I've been working on the new laptop fund for awhile, and I'd like to thank all the wonderful folks who have chipped in. I've raised a significant amount toward the cost from some incredibly generous donations from readers.
I'm getting an educational discount and I'm taking advantage of a promotion that ends January 30 that will save me a few bucks, so I'll be buying it next week.
And so, I'm putting out one last push for donations. I can cover the remainder from my savings, and I certainly don't want donations from anyone who can't afford it, but if you missed out on donating already, and would like to be part of the laptop, here's your chance.
9:36:53 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Small steps
This shouldn't be a very remarkable bill, but it is in a way. The Utah House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee voted 7-1 to reduce drug-free zones from 1,000 feet to 500 feet and to remove places such as parking plazas.
Ideally, the revised zones will restore the focus on protecting the children in the places they most frequently congregate, said the sponsor of HB231, Rep. Wayne Harper, R-West Jordan.
Since the drug-free zones were created in the 1980s, they have been "diluted" by expanded definitions that have made entire cities drug-free zones, Harper said.
In fact, drug free zones have been nothing more than an extra charge for prosecutors to pile on in the cities and have had nothing to do with protecting children.
Now I think drug zones are a pretty stupid idea, and a 500 foot radius still ends up covering more than four Manhattan-sized city blocks, but at least this is a small step in reversing the lemming-like trend of politicians mindlessly and incoherently increasing every drug-related penalty or prohibition they can find.
8:45:40 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Tuesday, January 23, 2007 |
Protecting the homeland
Via Grits for Breakfast
Grant money from the Department of Homeland Security is being used for a "Border Security Enhancement Operation" in ... wait for it...
Arkansas!
Of course, as Scott notes, it has nothing to do with homeland security:
The real purpose of the grant, though, is to fund overtime for a drug interdiction unit to work the highways trolling for asset forfeiture income, not "border security" or "terrorism." Reported the Gazette:
Some Texarkana, Texas, police officers may soon be deployed to help track down and arrest possible terrorists as well as drug smugglers along Interstate 30 and U.S. Highway 59. [...]
The interlocal cooperation agreement will allow city police to patrol and work traffic enforcement, on an overtime basis, along I-30 and U.S. Highway 59 to target illegal drug smugglers and terrorists, according to city records. [emphasis added]
This is insulting. And criminal. And people should be locked up for mis-using tax-payer money that's intended for protecting the United States from terrorism. You're not going to catch any terrorists in highway interdiction efforts, and they know it. What they'll do is get paid overtime, nab some of the less intelligent drug mules, collect some assets, and have absolutely no impact on the availability of drugs in the United States. And we're supposed to be reassured that the government is protecting us.
When are we going to protect the ports of Kansas?
Update: Scott helps me out in comments. The money is actually being spent in Texas to protect the Texas-Arkansas border from the... terrorists... trying to get into... Texas... from... Arkansas? Ahhhh.
10:00:36 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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U.S. Military cuts role in drug war
This LA Times article by Josh Meyer (which has been getting wide circulation) appears to be mostly drug warrior-supplied crying about the need for more military support in interdiction (although that has never been shown to actually, you know, accomplish anything).
If anything, the article is an interesting read to show just how impossible it is to stop the flow of drugs, regardless of your efforts. And when you've got unlimited profits involved, plus an unlimited supply of small fish willing to take a chance for a pay-off, the suppliers find the Defense Department's 22% "detection rate" (likely a much higher-than-actual number) merely a highly acceptable tariff.
9:11:11 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Monday, January 22, 2007 |
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Sunday, January 21, 2007 |
Open Thread and Odds and Ends
Some great football today. And a big thanks to the weather canceling my out-of-town meeting, so I could watch it.
N.M. Governor Bill Richardson threw his hat in the ring for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President. Apparently he's a big fan of making sure everyone can get the illegal drugs that they want easily, as he recently said "he would seek legislation creating a public registry for drug dealers." Aw, gee thanks, Bill. [Thanks, Micah]
Franken-Fungus -- the monster Dan Burton and Joe Biden created that just won't die.
Speaking of surviving a stake in the heart, STRAIGHT, Inc. appears to be alive and well and has turned into a Pathway in Indiana.
At 14, Nicky was using drugs as a way to control the mood swings that come with bipolar disorder, said Rose Gagen, her mother. About five years ago, she called police as a way to get Nicky into court-ordered treatment. The family chose the Pathway Family Center in Indianapolis because representatives at an assessment told her it had professionals on staff who could treat both Nicky's mental illness and her drug problems.
During her nine months at Pathway, Nicky said she spent nine to 11 hours a day, forced to sit in a rigid position on a straight chair with a cushion, legs pressed tightly together, feet straight out, hands on knees, elbows straight.
This has already been reported elsewhere, but if you haven't, you should read this email exchange with an elected official, who apparently believes that petitioning your government, rather than being a First Amendment right, is a reason to tell the local police about you.
9:40:01 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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