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Drug WarRant
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Friday, May 30, 2008 |
High Comedies
Nick Gillespie has a delightfully fun piece> over at Reason, detailing some of the best of the worst -- anti drug advertisements, with an honorable mention to the Stoners in the Mist website.
Stoners underscores what most Americans already knew: Real winners don't do anti-drug websites.
6:24:37 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Thursday, May 29, 2008 |
Some things I'm doing
As some of you know, I'm involved in a lot of other pursuits in addition to the Drug WarRant blog (and my day job). Some of these are going to keep me pretty busy in the near future -- I'll try to keep up the blogging, but I may miss a couple of days here and there.
Living Canvas I'm Producer/Artistic Director for a new production in Chicago this summer. Unsex Me Here - a Living Canvas production is the fifth performance art show based on the concepts in my fine art photography. This show will be loosely based on Macbeth. I'll be in Chicago every weekend for rehearsals until the show opens July 11 (running through August 16 at National Pastime Theater). More information available at my Living Canvas site. Don't miss it.
New York On Monday, I'll be taking 70 community people to New York for a seven day theatre trip. We'll be seeing shows every night and I'll give walking tours of different parts of the city each day. We're seeing August: Osage County, Passing Strange, The Country Girl, Reasons to be Pretty, The 39 Steps, and November (I'll also be seeing Momix at the Joyce Theater). I'll be pretty busy all week, but if you're in New York and would like to get together for coffee or a drink and talk drug policy, drop me a line, and we'll see if we can find a time.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival As part of my job, I'm doing the graphic design for the Festival's program guide and doing their photography. It's a great Festival, and if you're in Illinois, you should check it out this summer.
I sure wish there were more than seven days in a week sometimes.
11:32:53 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008 |
This won't end well...
Drug war cops want bigger guns
Mexican police need bigger guns to fight increasingly violent drug gangs, a federal police chief said, after drug hitmen killed seven officers in the northern city of Culiacan.
"We need machine guns," said General Rodolfo Cruz, the federal police force's link with the army in their joint 18-month-old war on Mexico's powerful drug cartels.
"Pistols are just for showing off, they are good for nothing," he told reporters in Culiacan
Oh, yeah, machine guns are a really good choice for police work, especially when you're working in populated areas of your own country filled with... citizens. You know, children, families, etc. Rather than just "showing off" with a pistol, you need something that indiscriminately scatters bullets all over the place.
You start with a drug war with massive black market profits. As criminal enterprises jockey for this gold mine, violence breaks out. Rather than deal with the root cause, you send in troops to go after the criminals. They fail to oblige by packing up and leaving their gold mine, but instead buy AK-47s and fight back, with violence escalating. So now you want machine guns to respond. And what will the criminal groups do? Roll over and play dead? No. They'll just get bigger guns, or escalate other guerilla warfare techniques. And then what happens?
Stratfor - publisher of online geo-political intelligence analysis written by a global team of intelligence professionals (read former CIA staff) - has argued that Mexico rapidly hurtling down the road to becoming a 'Failed State' due to the 'War on Drugs'.
You should read the entire Stratfor article: Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?"
There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels... That is the prescription for what is called a "failed state" -- a state that no longer can function as a state.
Escalating the war doesn't destroy the cartels. You can destroy individuals or even individual cartels, but the profits will still be there. They can bunker down within the citizenry and strike when they wish. And if the level of their ability to corrupt exceeds the resources of the country to counter (see Guitherism:"No government in the world can compete with the black market in financial compensation for police officers."), then you achieve a failed state.
The really sad thing is reading the conclusion of the Stratfor analysts.
One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn't going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.
11:06:33 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Presidential Candidates and the Drug War
I want to take a moment to follow up on my last post Obama and the drug war. Let me make it clear that I am not at all surprised by Obama's statements. I've said for years that Obama was unlikely to be a leader in drug policy reform. And given his past drug use, the political reality was always certain that he would overcompensate. As one reader noted in an email to me today -- The Republicans...
...will cast him as a pot-smoking, coke-snorting (and maybe drug-dealing) [black man]...if he was seen as advocating or soft on drugs, can you see it now: "he's just a [black man] who wants to legalize drugs!"
And that is the reality of mainstream politics in the Democratic and Republican party today. (I'll have a separate discussion about Barr and others who are running in 3rd parties later -- but in this post, I'm just talking about the Dems and Repubs.)
No Presidential candidate will come out of those two parties with the nomination and a strong reform position on drug policy. Not gonna happen. At least not for some time. So by ridiculing Obama's position on the drug war, I'm certainly not saying that anyone else is going to come out of that stink with a better smell. Certainly not McCain. Remember, change comes from the bottom. That's where we have to focus our efforts. It would be nice to believe that we could magically elect a leader that would change it all for us and save us all the grunt work, and I have my own daydream fantasies about what I'd do if I somehow suddenly became President (without having to prostitute myself to actually win the damn job), but I'm way too far down on the succession list, so it's just a daydream.
So, is there any reason to care about the Presidential election if we don't expect any real change from the top regarding drug policy?
Yes.
Let me tell you what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a candidate who won't be using the power of the federal government to actively prevent us from fomenting bottom-up change. The things that endanger us as free citizens also endanger our ability to function as a free citizenry. Authoritarian rule and lying to the people are two of the worst, and these have been the ascendant characteristics of this administration.
So, once I realize that anything that the two-party Presidential candidates say about the drug war are bullshit, I then take a look at them and ask myself: Which is more likely to promote authoritarian rule? Which is more likely to encourage and facilitate an ONDCP and DEA that lie to the people? Which is more likely to squelch dissent or treat drug war dissenters as a threat to the country? And as far as I can tell at this point, McCain wins the prize.
So, drug policy reform from Obama? Not a chance. Benign neglect? Possibly. Attempts to reverse, or slow, an authoritarian trend? Hopefully.
Update: Via Reuters:
During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama -- a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School -- was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.
"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution," said Obama.
9:08:03 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008 |
Obama and the drug war
This is why I don't express very much interest in the Presidential campaign.
When I am President, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program, and update it to meet evolving challenges. [...]
Mexican drug cartels are terrorizing cities and towns. President Calderon was right to say that enough is enough. We must support Mexico's effort to crack down. [...]
And we'll tie our support to clear benchmarks for drug seizures, corruption prosecutions, crime reduction, and kingpins busted. [...]
We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. [...]
And we'll crack down on the demand for drugs in our own communities, and restore funding for drug task forces and the COPS program.
Just great.
Change will not come from the top. It will only come from the bottom.
9:36:28 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Monday, May 26, 2008 |
But officer, this isn't my pot. Really!
Via Jamie Spencer comes this amusing story.
An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.
A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.
Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.
9:20:12 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Celebrating death
I'm sure they'll be pleased to know that they died because the drug war is a success.
The result has been mayhem: a street war in which no target has been too big, no attack too brazen.
Opposition politicians and even some police officials have begun to question whether the president's ambition has exceeded his grasp, with dangerous and destabilizing consequences for a country that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States.
The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure.
Success? Even if you assume that the escalated war is destabilizing the cartels, it's not like that would mean you would run out of those willing to use extreme measures to traffic drugs. As long as drugs are highly profitable black-market commodities, there will be people willing to step up to attempt to make their fortunes, no matter how many you destabilize or kill.
So there are two ways to actually make real change rather than just coming up with a new crop of dead bodies all the time.
- Convince everyone to stop using drugs. That's what commenter pfmpm at the article naively suggests. And yes, and such an idea is seductive to many, because it would work, if it were possible. I'd be open to hearing ideas on how you could accomplish it, but I think that the entirety of human existence serves as proof that it ain't gonna happen.
- Remove the distribution of drugs from the black market. This can be done -- we've done it before.
9:38:20 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Sunday, May 25, 2008 |
I think he's foreign
Funny
Note: Other than obvious spam, I think I've deleted about two posts on the blog in four years and that was for calling another commenter names. If anyone actually thought I was deleting posts, they could, I suppose, actually write me about it so I could try to find out what happened. But I'm guessing these are just trolls of some kind.
10:53:50 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Ah, that disconnect
Mark L. Schneider has an OpEd in the Christian Science Monitor: Rethink The Fight Against Cocaine
This is another one of those articles that starts out pretty much right on track -- identifying the failures of the war on drugs...
Every year, White House officials describe the US counterdrug policies in the same glowing terms used to describe the Emperor's new clothes: We're snuffing out coca crops and cracking down on those who grow them. [...]
Officials tell us they've made progress in eradicating tens of thousands of acres of coca by spraying chemical weed-killer from airplanes protected by heavily armed helicopter gunships.
They tell success stories about hundreds of tons of coca paste and cocaine they've seized on Colombian roads and on the high seas. They speak proudly of the coffee, beans, and vegetables harvested under Colombian and US alternative development projects.
But there are key facts missing in their description of the Emperor's counterdrug-policy wardrobe. When Plan Colombia ( the multibillion dollar US assistance program targeted at curbing drug smuggling and supporting Colombia against armed guerrillas ) started, coca was cultivated in 12 of Colombia's 34 provinces. Today it is grown in 23 of those provinces.
In 2006, after five years of Plan Colombia, four years of the regional Andean Counterdrug Initiative, and after spending $5.5 billion, some 1,000 metric tons of cocaine were produced between Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. That's about the same amount that was produced in 2002 when President Alvaro Uribe took office.
The head of the White House Office of Narcotics and Drug Control Program, John Walters, admitted at a press conference in Haiti recently that last year that cocaine production had risen to 1,400 metric tons in 2007 - a whopping 40 percent hike. Not surprisingly, his staff is scrambling to rephrase that.
Yep. A major failure, and an attempt by the government to white-wash it.
Good points, based on the facts.
But then, before long, comes the disconnect -- the notion that since there is no reality other than prohibition, any solutions have to come within the constraints of prohibition.
And you can see the pathetic scrambling to come up with something that makes sense when an entire set of options simply doesn't exist in your brain.
So, since the drug war is a failure, how does Schneider propose "fixing" it? Three points:
- Shift to economic development.
That's why it's so important for Washington to support a massive increase in rural infrastructure investment, rural governance, and public service extension into those communities now.
Fair enough as an idea by itself, but that's not going to really change anything. And he knows that,
- So...
Certainly for traffickers, the only option is more effective law enforcement that works closely with other nations to go after their money, their assets, and their structures.
What does that even mean? We haven't been doing that? This is just nonsensical language that says that since prohibition isn't working, we must not be trying hard enough, rather than following the logical and rational conclusion that perhaps something else should be tried.
- And here's the final point of disconnect. Somehow magically mobilize the masses of drug users to change their reality to match that of the prohibitionist.
And a massive public service effort should be launched to target recreational users that equates cocaine use with drunken driving - unacceptable destructive behavior. Their weekend fun kills young people in Colombia and Los Angeles and Miami. It has to stop.
Really? That's going to work? What happens if those recreational users know that you're full of it and that ending the drug war is the way to save those young people in Colombia and Los Angeles? Even if they don't know this, what makes you think that any kind of PR campaign is going to magically stop drug use? Could you do the same thing with sex? Simply tell everyone to stop having sex in order to stop overpopulation and the spread of STD's. Right.
How can an intelligent person even propose such nonsense? It's because they intellectually are stunted -- they are unable to conceive of any existence other then prohibition, so they don't have... reality... to draw upon in their calculations.
Having a discussion about the failure of prohibition without being able to consider a world without it is like trying to do math without using even numbers.
5:04:06 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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And the justice system goes even more to the dogs
The Michigan Court of appeals apparently doesn't really understand the Constitution.
The Michigan Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling released Wednesday, said police may use dogs to sniff outside a house for drugs without a search warrant. A Wayne County judge had suppressed evidence and dismissed marijuana charges against Detroiter Jeffrey Jones -- who had been convicted of previous drug charges -- because Jones argued the sniffing was an illegal search. The majority on the appeals panel agreed with prosecutors that police, acting on a tip, may use a trained dog to sniff the front door, and use that information to get a warrant to search inside the house.
This is the inevitable result of the Supremely bad decision in Illinois v. Caballes that allowed dog sniffs to justify searches in traffic stops that were otherwise lacking in suspicion.
Now it's your homes.
We are ceding the decision-making regarding time-honored 4th Amendment protection of the home to an animal -- and one that is much more pathetically eager to please than it is smart.*
Want to search someone's house? Don't worry about probable cause. Just bring your dog to sniff the front door. If the dog you've trained acts the way you want him to, then that will be all you need to get a warrant to search someone's home. And if what you subsequently find is odorless and clear at the other end of the house, it won't matter, because once you have the warrant, you'll no longer have to justify whether the dog actually smelled anything.
*Apologies to dog lovers, but it's true. If you don't believe me point at something across the room and see if your dog acts more pathetically eager, or more smart.
12:18:54 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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