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Drug WarRant
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Friday, October 17, 2008 |
Open Thread
 The Committee on Oversight and Government has issued a report critical of the Drug Czar's office and others, for their efforts to help the Bush Administration get Republicans elected in 2006. It's something we talked about at the time. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be as interested in the ONDCP's efforts to undermine state and local initiatives and legislative efforts.
The Daily Mail just has no limit to its absurdity.
A senior police officer delivered a fierce attack on the reclassification of cannabis yesterday after a long-term user who ignored medical pleas to kick the habit was jailed for murdering his girlfriend.
Detective Superintendent Andy West said the decision to downgrade the drug from Class B to C was the 'worst thing' he had seen in 28 years of policing. [...]
Middlebrook, the 27-year- old son of a teacher, had been a cannabis user for ten years when he stabbed Miss Barton 15 times with three knives as she lay naked in his bed. [...]
'This man is going to serve over 12 years so when people say this is a safe drug I don't agree.' [...]
Police and paramedics reported the pungent smell of cannabis in the room and empty beer cans. [...]
Middlebrook told police he acted because he feared for his life and that 'she was in cahoots with a group of lads who are trying to kill me'.
A post-mortem examination found Miss Barton had also smoked cannabis before her death.
The case is the latest involving a cannabis user who carried out a violent crime.
I wonder if Middlebrook was a milk user, and whether they considered that aspect...
In the "we already knew that" category:
New research finds that a national campaign's anti-drug TV ads failed to convince young children and teenagers to stay away from marijuana and actually might have encouraged some to try smoking pot.
In their 1999 to 2004 incarnation, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign's TV ads "either had no effects on kids or possibly had a boomerang effect," said Robert Hornik, lead author of a new study and professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Congress created the anti-drug campaign in the late 1990s and gave almost $1 billion to it through 2004, according to the study. The taxpayer-funded campaign continues to create anti-drug advertising today.
The study appears online and in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Senator Jim Webb is continuing his efforts to address sentencing issues with his symposium on Wednesday: Drugs in America: Trafficking, Policy and Sentencing
R.I.P. Beth Wehrman
Beth was a leader in the field of harm reduction.
Known as the "Needle Lady of Illinois," Wehrman is estimated to have exchanged more than 11,000 needles to help prevent the spread of HIV.
A classy lady. She will be missed.
How dense does the media have to be to continue reporting these marijuana destroys the environment stories?
"People light up a joint," said Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service, "and they have no idea the amount of environmental damage associated with it."
And why aren't they finding clandestine tobacco fields? Hmmm...
Fortunately, the Marijuana Policy Project is publicly responding. (although if anyone has Cicely Muldoon's email address, I wouldn't mind getting it).
8:42:32 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Thursday, October 16, 2008 |
Move along, nothing to see here, folks.
Tarika Wison is still dead
LIMA, Ohio (AP) - An outside review has concluded that a Lima
police officer didn't violate any department rules in the fatal
shooting of unarmed woman during a drug raid.
Let's see if I've got this straight.
He didn't violate any rules when he shot and killed a mother and mutilated her baby.
Hmmm... Let me try this again.
The Lima Police department rules find breaking into a house to look for drugs, shooting the dogs and shooting a woman to death while she's holding her baby... acceptable.
You know....
I'm generally in the camp that isn't looking for extra rules and regulations, but I would think that I would want my police department to actually have a rule against going into somebody's home and shooting them to death. Particularly if they don't have hostages.
Am I crazy?
1:10:05 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008 |
Honduras President Proposes Legalizing Drug Use
via Cato is this article:
President Manuel Zelaya proposed legalizing drug use, which he said would free up Honduras's financial resources and defang international traffickers.
"The trade of arms, drugs and people ... are scourges on the international economy, and we are unable to provide effective responses" because of conventional legal restraints, Zelaya said Monday at the opening of the 18th meeting of regional leaders against drug trafficking. [...]
"Rather than continue to kill and capture traffickers, we could invest in resources for education and training," the Honduran leader said.
He figured it out.
3:42:50 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Odds and Ends
Via Transform, comes the interesting case of a man who is taking his drug charges in the U.K. to the High Court on the basis that it's an arbitrary abuse of power to charge him for cannabis when alcohol and tobacco are legal.
Edwin Stratton, 43, of Leyton, London, is charged with production of cannabis under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 ("The Act"). He has today given notice of his intention to challenge the legitimacy of this prosecution in the High Court as an abuse of process. This assertion is evidenced by the bias and discrimination inherent in the policy that equally harmful drugs and those exercising property rights in such drugs should be treated differently in law. The defence claims a majoritarian abuse of power by the executive in the administration of drugs legislation. The rights afforded under the Human Rights Act 1998 guarantee freedom from arbitrary discrimination: this claim is grounded in the unequal protection afforded to drug property rights between 'licit' and 'illicit' drugs. This challenge seeks to hold the government and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs ("ACMD") to account for an alleged irrational administration of the law which has led to countless thousands of lives lost and destroyed in the so-called 'War on Drugs'.
I really know too little about England's legal system to say just how how unlikely anything would come from a case like this, but I like it. I love the audacity of it, and the fact that it's likely to add to the conversation.
There's a lot of depressing stuff in the news about the drug war violence in Mexico, as the deaths keep piling up, and I tend not to want to be overwhelmed by it. But worth reading is Silja J.A. Talvi's excellent article in Alternet: As the Violence Soars, Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs.
...a national poll published on October 4th indicated that more than 40% of Mexicans felt less secure since Calderón's drug war offensive began. Another poll published by the Mexico City daily, Reforma, showed that more than half of Mexicans believed that the cartels, not the government, were winning the drug war. [...]
On October 2, Calderón proposed legislation that would decriminalize drug possession, ostensibly for personal use. Not just for marijuana, as one might have expected in a country where pot smoke has not been demonized to the same degree as in the U.S., but for cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, as well.
Some good quotes from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition members in the article.
So Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns flies to Michigan on the taxpayer's dime to campaign against a medical marijuana initiative, and what expert opinion does he provide?
"Proposal 1 is bad for Michigan and it is bad for America," Burns said.
"This issue is about dope, not about medicine."
Yep, that's what he has to offer. Pretty pathetic.
9:33:44 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Sunday, October 12, 2008 |
Your tax dollars at work
Link
The U.S. deputy drug czar will be in Grand Rapids Monday to campaign against an initiative on the state's Nov. 4 ballot that would legalize marijuana use for serious medical conditions such as cancer and glaucoma.
Call your Congressman and ask why your tax dollars are being used to send federal agencies out to campaign against state initiatives. Ask if they really have extra money for that lying around in Washington.
Seriously. Do it now. It's easy.
I'll wait...
Did you call yet?
11:42:33 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Former drug cop says his lies sent over 150 to jail
New Zealand
Police have hired one of the country's top lawyers to investigate a former officer's stunning confession that he lied in court - and wrongfully sent at least 150 people to prison.
Patrick O'Brien wrote to Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias admitting to perjury, saying he was racked with guilt after carrying a "dreadful secret" for more than 30 years.
Now nearly 60, O'Brien was an undercover agent in covert drugs operations in the 1970s, immersed in a dark, criminal underworld, and the star Crown witness in the resulting court trials. [...]
In his confession, O'Brien told Dame Sian he answered to the "grey men" who trained him, on whose orders he lied to obtain the convictions at any cost.
"They called it Doomsday work and instructed me to take this dreadful secret to the grave," O'Brien wrote.
"In every case I lied to the courts and I lied to the juries to obtain convictions against my targets.
"Telling lies was easy - 'policemen don't tell lies' - and my targets never stood a chance."
Tampering with evidence was also common, he said. Often the exhibit before the court was not the drugs that he bought from the target.
So his conscience brought about his turnaround. How many others didn't have one?
"I am nearly 60 years old now, and in what time is left to me, intend correcting the wrong I have done."
A herculean task.
You see, this is another aspect of the tragedy and disease of the drug war.
The social contract that we enter into for the safe operation of society gives extraordinary power to law enforcement, and with that arrangement comes incredible responsibility to be perfect in holding that trust.
Both the responsibility and the trust must be there for law enforcement to adequately do its job.
But the drug war corrupts. Not only financially, but in terms of that social contract. Police see citizens as their enemy and the ends start justifying the means. When that happens, they destroy the fragile balance of responsibility and trust.
What comes next? As certainly as night follows day, when the trust is broken -- when the contract is not honored -- extreme lawlessness and civil unrest follow.
There are a lot of good cops out there, and they certainly don't want to be judged by the excesses and corruption of the bad apples, but we have no choice. How are we to tell which apples are bad by looking at them? Every damaged one we discover makes us even more suspicious of the rest.
So the good cops know that they must not cover up the activities of bad cops behind the blue code of silence. That, in fact, they must actively pursue and punish those who betray the badge. Otherwise they become tainted by the rot.
But that's not enough. There is so much drug war corruption in law enforcement that those of us on the other side of that social contract quite simply cannot have confidence that the rotten apples are being found.
So the good cops -- the ones who understand the importance of the trust -- must take it a step further. They must root out the very cause of the rot, and advocate with all their might for the end of the corrupting drug war laws. Only then, can they salvage the contract and bring back the truth of their purpose.
For those good cops looking to take that step, I give you Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
1:35:08 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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