I've got to say that at first glance, the makeup of these Homeland Security Committees is pretty horrible. Chairman Lieberman? Pryor, Coburn, McCain, Burris? And Souder in the House? These are names unlikely to demonstrate even a glimmer of intelligence regarding the drug war.
And they're about "knock down the door" of a cocaine-making lab . . . big time.
KABOOM! A searing blast of heat scorches Chris's cheeks as the hut VAPORISES before his eyes, sending a 3,000ft plume of smoke into the air thanks to plastic explosives planted by the Junglas--Colombia's frontline cops in the war against drugs.
"We left the coke lab a blast site of scorched metal stinking of napalm," says Bravo Two Zero hero Chris who worked with the squad for his dramatic TV series, Elite Police, about the South American cocaine trail. "Then we needed to get out fast."
This is drug war action so intense, it even spontaneously breaks out into CAPITALS!
But of course, this isn't about making money. It's got a more important message:
"There was a story where 14 gangsters' bodies turned up without heads. Their gang then chopped off the rival gang's heads a week later. There's no end to what they will do."
Now Chris hopes his programme will make cocaine users in the UK sit up and take notice. "Despite cocaine being so addictive, some Brits see it as relatively harmless," says Chris.
"But as I discovered, the facts behind it are horrifying. And the misery it causes on its way to our streets is shocking."
Marijuana's Manhattan Project -- fascinating five-page article about a couple of medical marijuana entrepreneurs who, at some risk, are developing lab testing protocols for medical marijuana to improve growing safety and to provide better information to patients about the pot they're purchasing.
Every state that signs up to the Political Declaration at this Commission recommits the UN to complicity in fighting a catastrophic war on drugs. It is a tragic irony that the UN, so often renowned for peacekeeping, is being used to fight a war that brings untold misery to some of the most marginalised people on earth. 8000 deaths in Mexico in recent years, the destabilisation of Colombia and Afghanistan, continued corruption and instability in the Caribbean and West Africa are testament to the catastrophic impact of a drug control system based upon global prohibition.
It is no surprise that the Declaration is unlikely even to mention harm reduction, as it runs counter to the primary impact of the prevailing drug control system which, as the past ten years demonstrate, increases harm.
Always refuse searches. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose when you allow an officer to search your belongings. Why people routinely waive their fourth amendment rights is completely beyond me. I don't know what kind of marijuana students at KSU smoke, but I'm guessing it must be pretty strong to make them forget a 222-year-old document that they learned about in third grade.
I have a message for John Walters. We had to listen to you for 8 years, now shut the fuck up. You have nothing valid to add to any conversation. Note: Jacob Sullum actually goes to the effort to fisk this nonsense. He's a more patient man than I.
In July 2007, Teresa Ortega stood solemnly in a field of wilting corn and pineapple crops as tears streamed down her cheeks. She had taken it upon herself to start a farm with 100 widows - women who lost their husbands and children to Colombia's war and were fighting against poverty. Together they had purchased this small farm and worked it on the weekends to make ends meet. Now - after a plane sprayed chemicals over their farm - all was lost.
To bureaucrats in Washington, Teresa and her friends are simply additional collateral damage at ground zero of Washington's drug war in South America.
This article is mostly a detailed review of the situation in Mexico, complete with the usual quotes from Mexican officials that the violence is proof that the war is working. The Economist doesn't take a strong obvious position here, but notes that there's no evidence that the cartels are in danger, concluding "And the drug business, ever supple, will adapt and survive."
This chart was a particularly interesting addition to the article, showing that nothing we do to attempt to eradicate coca can possibly work. Certainly in the last 20 years, we have been funding and actively participating in immense eradication efforts. The effect? Absolutely zero. In fact, production went up.
This article gives a brief overview of enforcement differences around the world, noting tha, while the UNODC would like to hold Sweden up as an example of oppressive drug policy that works, the real story doesn't support that as a world-wide model:
A survey last year by the World Health Organisation examined drug-taking in 17 countries and found no link between the strictness of prohibition and the amount of drug consumption. (The lenient Netherlands, interestingly, has one of the lowest rates of "problem" drug use in Europe.) "Countries with more stringent policies did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies," the researchers concluded. For every strict regime like Sweden, there is another such as Britain or America where a tough approach co-exists with widespread drug use.
This article focuses mostly on the smuggling of cocaine to England, noting that "as one route closes, another opens up" but noting that many of the criminals lack market sophistication making the job a bit easier for the police at the current time.
This is an overview of drug education efforts here (complete with a paragraph on DARE), with this fine conclusion:
It may seem odd that the campaign against tobacco, a legal drug, has displayed so much more élan than the war on illegal drugs. Yet this is natural. Making a drug illegal may discourage some people from taking it, but it also discourages frank conversation and clear thinking. It is much easier to attack something if it is brought into the light.
But the best piece in the entire issue was the lead story:
The article starts out talking about the failures of the drug war, even using the phrase "Al Capone, but on a global scale." And then they get to their recommendation:
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.
Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.
That's why we, in the consumer countries, need to fight harder to convince people. And then the article made another critical point:
That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
And we do generally assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise, even though there is, in fact, no hard evidence even of that. But the point is that's OK, because then we can focus our efforts on reducing the harm of the abusive drug taking and not worry about the responsible drug taking.
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state's job to stop them from doing so.
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.
Exactly. The fact is that we can never, in a prohibition regime, effectively deal with those who have problems with drugs.
The final conclusion:
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
I sure do love listening to people who understand economics talk about the drug war.
Mrs. Mary Carlin Yates, a former United States Ambassador to Ghana, has asked journalists to assist traditional chiefs, fishermen and the security agencies to fight the illicit drug trade, [...]
Mrs Yates said though challenges confronting the media were enormous, "you should not give up because you give a voice to your own people who cannot speak for themselves."
"If you allow drug cartels to take over your country, it will take a long time to rid the society off the effects of the menace, adding, already Ghana is an example in democratic principles in Africa and the world, and she must, therefore, take control of its territorial security to safeguard the interests of the citizenry.
Mrs Yates noted that the media's role in the fight of the drug war was crucial and would go a long way to complement the efforts of the military and other international partners.
Apparently, telling people the truth missed her list of media roles.
I don't know who this guy is, but the depth of his stupidity is truly astonishing.
But according to our local drug-legalization crowd, led by marijuana's false prophets, those feds just don't understand the way we choose to live in la-la-land. This clutch of deceitful addicts and their myopic supporters propose legalization of cannabis and other illicit drugs, and the introduction of a bureaucratic system of drug regulation and distribution.
Their dream-world fantasy is based on a misty notion that illicit drugs could be produced and distributed like alcohol; that by the stroke of a pen the multi-billion dollar gangland drug manufacturing/importing/exporting business would be transformed into a legal, manageable and taxable government monopoly. Yet to be explained by marijuana's false prophets: How a pussycat government monopoly hopes to persuade gangsters to trade in their guns for bongs, become choir boys, and refrain from continuing to sell drugs in an inevitable black market.
Fat chance, I say.
Marijuana's false prophets send a steady stream of misinformation about a supposed similarity between the brief period when alcohol was prohibited and our hundred years of criminalization of illicit drugs, always ending with the same catchphrase: Let's take control of marijuana -- tax it, standardize and regulate it. [...]
It is a false message. Gang violence and murder will not end with fairy-tale legalization. International crime syndicates, coupled with source countries around the world profiting in the production of narcotics, will continue to target Canada and the United States. Legalization would cause them to increase their activity to accommodate an increase in the numbers of addicts in Canada.
Forget all the other stupidity in those paragraphs. How does a sentient being come up with a thought process wherein criminal syndicates continue to sell illegal drugs at high profit when they're available legally? Is Wallace unable to imagine a human who buys drugs? Does he think that the average drug purchaser would say "Well, I could purchase this legally at the corner and it would be safe and inexpensive. No, I think I'll go get it from a criminal instead." ? Does he not know that the black market cannot exist unless goods are illegal or over-regulated?
It gets worse. Wallace Gilby found the writings of Anthony Daniels, writing under the pseudnym of Theodore Dalrymple (probably because he had an inkling that he was writing complete crap). He shares some quotes with us, including:
"Analogies with the Prohibition era, often drawn by those who would legalize drugs, are false and inexact: it is one thing to attempt to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by at least nine-tenths of the adult population, and quite another to retain a ban on substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure that they never do become customary. Surely we have already slid down enough slippery slopes in the last 30 years without looking for more such slopes to slide down."
What nonsense. Prohibition of substances is prohibition of substances. Period. And regardless of historical use, the laws of economics control. If there is demand, there will be supply, and prohibition won't work.
Wallace Gilby Craig is a wanker, no doubt. But I've got to admit he can turn a colorful phrase, even if it is meaningless:
Dalrymple's observations are apropos to today's campaign of drug legalizers, including marijuana's false prophets, to destroy the moral and ethical integrity of our precious individual liberty by including in it an absolute and unfettered right to dally with marijuana, chemical drugs and narcotics.
Wake up Canada! Dedicated narcissistic marijuana users and psychosocial hard drug abusers are parasitical citizens, engaged solely in their own interests and pleasures.
Their creed: I care for nothing but myself.
I particularly love that our push for legalization will destroy our precious individual liberty.
Wall Street Journal balances sanity with stupidity
A couple of days ago, I gently chided Mary O'Grady for not being as direct with her conclusions about the need to end prohibition as she seemed to want to be in her recent Wall Street Journal column. While I wished she would push harder to get the Journal to come out more for a sane approach (and perhaps they're not ready to go there), I noted that she clearly understands the most important parts -- the part that economics plays in prohibition, that supply-side drug wars are doomed to failure, and that ending prohibition is the only way to stop the black market profits.
I thought that maybe the Wall Street Journal was ready -- after all, they also ran an OpEd by former Latin American Presidents Fernanco Henrique Cardoso, César Gaviria, and Ernesto Zedillo The War on Drugs is a Failure.
...the plain political fact is that drug legalization in the U.S. is not going to happen as long as a powerful moral and social consensus opposes it. To make the case for it now while Mexico bleeds is an exercise in fecklessness. [...]
Mexico's achievements have not been negligible. The government has managed to spark power struggles within and among cartels, and the vast majority of Mexico's murder victims are themselves involved in the drug trade. More important, Mr. Calderón has sent the signal that his government will not repeat the patterns of complacency and collusion that typified Mexico for decades. Whatever else might be said about his government, it's a serious one.
This does not mean Mr. Calderón will win this war. But for those of us who know Mexico well, it is an astonishing turn, deserving neither of pity nor sagacious snickering, but of respect.
Shorter Bret Stephens: Legalization is not going to happen, so there's no point talking about it. But doing nothing is not an option, either. We need to be serious, and lots of violence and death means we're serious, even if it doesn't actually work. So we should respect Mexico for achieving pointless death.
Tom Ammiano (who sponsored the bill to legalize marijuana in California) in the SFGate:
What if California could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to preserve vital state services without any tax increase? And what if at the same time, we could, without any new expense, help protect our endangered wilderness areas while making it harder for our kids to get drugs? [...]
There may be disagreements about what direction to take, but it is clear to everyone involved that our current approach is not working. Regulation allows common-sense controls and takes the marijuana industry out of the hands of unregulated criminals.
As a member of the state Assembly, I believe we must acknowledge reality and bring innovative solutions to the issue of marijuana, not simply wait for the federal government. This is how change happens. Californians lead rather than follow, and we can set an example for the nation as we did on medical marijuana by passing AB390.
And he's interviewed in Salon:
Do you think legalizing it endorses its use?
Its use is there anyway. People do it everywhere. It's better if you have a situation, like with booze, when you regulate it. If you're smoking the legal product, you're an adult, and it's not full of pesticides, additives or other crap. The environment would benefit because a lot of these rogue plantations pollute the water source and deplete the soil. The growers pull up and walk away without any kind of remediation. You have to admit to reality here. I think everyone has been on this big denial trip.
The day may not be far off when Americans conclude, as they did with Prohibition in the 1930s, that violence associated with the marijuana ban is worse than the drug's social ills. Some will raise the slippery slope argument that legalization opens the way to decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. Maybe we would have that discussion if legal marijuana works out, but saying yeah to one doesn't mean saying yes to the other.
Marijuana prohibition no longer makes sense, if it ever did. For the record, my recreational chemical of choice is alcohol. After the sun sets, I like to enjoy a glass of wine or scotch. Why shouldn't my neighbor, if so inclined, be able to relax with a joint?
Good news from California's DMV. While they claim not to be changing policy, there had been indications that they were yanking driver's licenses of medical marijuana patients simply because of their status. Now they've clarified that medical marijuana is treated "exactly the same as any other prescription drug."
The Appeal Democrat (Maysville, CA) editorial suggests that the next step needs to be re-scheduling marijuana.
The criteria for Schedule I are as follows: "A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse, B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
Marijuana does not meet any of these criteria. In 1988 the then-chief administrative law judge of the DEA, Francis Young, stated as much in an extensive advisory opinion based on several years of hearings. This view was reaffirmed by an extensive 1999 report in book form by the government's Institute of Medicine, which summarized all the most recent research documenting marijuana's medicinal uses and potential.
As the law is written, then, marijuana does not belong on Schedule I. If anything it belongs on Schedule V, the least-restrictive schedule. But even putting it on Schedule II (along with cocaine, morphine, amphetamines, PCP and opium) would allow physicians and their patients to use it appropriately. It would still not allow "recreational" use.
We understand that the Obama administration has a lot on its plate. But correcting this ongoing mistake, thereby alleviating a great deal of pain and suffering nationwide, is worth consideration.
Then there are those in California who lead... the wrong way.
San Diego County is nothing if not determined (or perhaps pigheaded). They really don't like the state's medical marijuana law and are doing everything they can to avoid implementing it (at great taxpayer expense) despite being shot down by every court so far.
San Diego County attorneys say they are pressing ahead with a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to resolve conflicting state and federal medical marijuana laws. That's in spite of comments from U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, suggesting federal enforcement of marijuana laws may change.
I really don't believe the Supreme Court will take this one. They've been pretty clear all along that while federal law supersedes state law, it doesn't negate it.
We should never have reduced the criminal penalties associated with the possession of marijuana.
And so what are the reasons for this?
But the reality is if you use marijuana, and are arrested for the infraction, the charge stays on your permanent record. And such a charge may hinder your chances for employment, particularly if you ever had aspirations of working in law enforcement at the local, state or federal level.
A marijuana charge also negatively affects the way you are perceived when you apply for other jobs. You may, for example, lose your ability to apply for a commercial driver's license if you garner a marijuana charge. You may also lose the chance to work for a particular company if that corporation requires regular drug tests and perceives you to be a habitual user of marijuana.
The list of problems associated with marijuana use is endless.
Um. Huh? Thats a list of problems associated with prohibition. The Sheriff appears to be saying that they should never have decriminalized marijuana because there are still major penalties that users could face.
What other reasons does the Sheriff offer?
I also reminded the students that when you become a regular marijuana user in high school, you are looked down upon by those who do not partake in the practice.
Ah, yes. Marijuana should be illegal because people will think less of you if you smoke it... Yeah, that makes sense.
It continues to amaze me that some law enforcement in Massachusetts is completely incapable of understanding.... the law.
Narcotics officers in a two-county drug force in North Carolina were serving a warrant on a suspected marijuana dealer. After a hot, tiring day searching the house -- and while waiting for the truck to load up the seized growing equipment and the misdemeanor amount of pot -- they got some pizza... and beer.
It was very nice of County Sheriff Joe Shook to provide the beer, particularly since he had to drive across state lines to Georgia to get it (the county they were in was a dry county).
Before police officers with drug-sniffing dogs scoured the halls at Mount Vernon High School on Tuesday, students were given a five-minute warning to come clean.
A few handed over prescription and over-the-counter medications hidden in their backpacks or lockers.
The hourlong building sweep that followed netted no illegal drugs, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a success, said detective Cpl. Matt Dailey of the Mount Vernon Police Department, who helped organize the search. "We want them to know that we're out there; we're watching." [...]
"I think the bang for the buck is very good on the return," said Bob Cornwell, director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association. [...]
School officials say that random, unannounced drug sweeps help them measure a school's safety and security. The exercise also is designed to make students think twice, said Mount Vernon Superintendent Steve Short.
Yep, that's a deterrent all right.
You know what else would be a good deterrent? Selecting students at random and making them strip naked in front of everyone while guards go through their clothes and bags. That'd be a good deterrent.
Or how about this? Gather all the students in an assembly and pick one and execute him in front of a firing squad right there in the gym. Tell the other students that'll happen to anyone who uses drugs. That would be a good deterrent.
A little extreme? Sure.
But you see, this is the mentality that has infected our schools. Anything goes as long as it's seen as a deterrent to drug use (even if it isn't). And so our young people are raised believing that they have no rights and become perfect fodder for authoritarians.
I have been heartened by the incredible work and growth of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. It gives me hope for the future in the development of a base of young drug policy reform activists.
And then I see an editorial like this in the school newspaper of a major university (University of Arizona) and I smile.
But this policy could not be more relevant to our current condition, as the UA sinks into a financial mire of budget shortfalls, desperate reorganization schemes and forced cutbacks. What better time to ask whether pursuing and penalizing student drug-users is really the wisest use of our time and money?
Of course, the UA didn't write this policy, and it might be argued that even a united university community would be hard-pressed to change a federal law. But difficult is not the same as impossible, and it's not impossible to imagine changed policy resulting from a nation of colleges raging against a policy that demands that they treat campus pot-smokers the same way they would treat, say, an outbreak of campus heroin addiction.
Our student government leaders, so eager to leap on anything that smacks of the downtrodden, should make this issue their own. At the very least, they would make it clear that this issue is an issue, and one that affects us all. After all, even those of us who don't partake still wind up paying when those who do get busted - we pay through the teeth for the service, in fact, every April.
A nation of colleges raging against a policy. That's something to dream about.
Wall Street Journal slams Obama for not legalizing marijuana
The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady has, in the past, demonstrated an understanding of the economics of the drug war -- usually, unfortunately, without taking that final step in proposing the solution (she dances around it).
Today's OpEd is a very bizarre piece. Tell me what you think, but it appears to me that she's trying to find a way to push the Journal's required anti-Obama venom, while sneaking in a message about legalization.
Here's how it starts (complete with a picture of captured Mexican gang members in front of a helicopter with a display of seized weapons):
Just when you thought the effects of U.S. drug policy couldn't get more pernicious, guess what? That's where we're headed.
Mexico's young democracy is already paying a high price for the lethal combination of prohibition and strong gringo demand for mind-altering substances. Drug violence has escalated as Mexican suppliers intent on satisfying appetites across the border have tangled with each other and law enforcement. Now the U.S. is getting ready to raise the incentives for gangsters.
Whoa -- what did that Obama do?
At a press conference last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder indicated that President Obama would keep a campaign promise by ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.
Huh?
This means that the weed will remain illegal to transport and sell -- and thus highly profitable for criminals -- but there will be fewer repercussions for those who use it in states with liberal marijuana laws.
OK, that's stretching a point a bit. Yes, it's true that the big problem with any decrim-only effort is that it doesn't remove the black market, and it's also true that a certain amount of Mexican marijuana may get diverted into the medical marijuana market despite the state laws allowing caregivers to grow their own. But to say that eliminating federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries is going to enrich Mexican gangs is reaching - we're not talking about eliminating laws here - merely allowing the states to enforce their own in this one area.
So now, wade through six or seven paragraphs about the violence in Mexico (including the now obligatory "violence means we're winning" meme, this time by Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora), and you get the real point that O'Grady appears to want to make -- hidden at the very end.
To really change things for the better, Latin American countries need the Americans to cut funding to the bad guys. Mr. Medina Mora estimates that drug consumers north of the Rio Grande put some $10 billion into the pockets of the cartels annually. This is how they either buy, intimidate or annihilate many of those who get in their way.
More interesting is Mexico's estimates that half of all cartel revenue comes from the marijuana business. That means, by my calculation, that if you lift the prohibition on trafficking pot alone, it would cut mob income by half. It also means that if the U.S. adopts a wink-wink policy of tolerating marijuana use but keeps it officially illegal, the thugs are going to get richer.
It is considered politically risky in the U.S. to argue for lifting the ban on marijuana. But that's no excuse for Mr. Obama's policy, which will harm Mexico further. The country has already paid enough for American hypocrisy on drug use.
Interesting how she used "lift the prohibition on trafficking" and "lifting the ban" as tortured euphemisms for "legalize."
Come on, Mary. Don't hold back. Come out and say it. You know you want to!
Talk to your co-editors and get the Wall Street Journal behind legalization -- not buried in the article, but in the headline and the lede. It's the right thing to do.
This is a great time for drug policy reformers. There's a lot of buzz out there, and there are a ton of drug policy issues being discussed. We need to take advantage of the opportunity and keep the discussion going.
Write a letter to the editor. Strike up a conversation with friends or co-workers about a story in the news. Or even simply comment on news stories in the comments section of your local paper.
In addition to commenting on the drug policy stories out there (Mexico, California legalization, New Jersey Medical Marijuana, etc.), another trick is to show people how so many different stories come back to drug policy reform. Your paper reports on the 15-year-old girl who was beaten by a cop? Forget that it wasn't about drugs - point out that the drug war has created a dynamic where many cops look at citizens as the enemy.
A story on the economy? (There are lots of those these days.) Point out the massive amounts we're spending on the drug war while making things worse. The drug war is a stimulus plan for criminal job creation.
A story about a pot bust? Throw them a curve. Compliment the officers on doing their job, but point out that in an hour the pot dealer will be replaced by another one and the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for enforcement, prosecution and jail.
Use facts and reason. Take the high road. Don't ramble or get angry, and avoid phrases like "Free the Weed!"
If you want help in writing Letters to the Editor, go to MAPinc - the main resource for getting published.
This article is mostly a detailed review of the situation in Mexico, complete with the usual quotes from Mexican officials that the violence is proof that the war is working. The Economist doesn't take a strong obvious position here, but notes that there's no evidence that the cartels are in danger, concluding "And the drug business, ever supple, will adapt and survive."
