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Drug WarRant
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Mark Kleiman adjusts marijuana legalization position
Mark Kleiman, despite his support for prohibition in many forms, has, for quite some time, advocated limited legalization of marijuana, on a "grow-your-own" plan. Here's one mention of it from earlier this year:
So I continue to favor a "grow your own" policy, under which it would be legal to grow, possess, and use cannabis and to give it away, but illegal to sell it. Of course there would be sales, and law enforcement agencies would properly mostly ignore those sales. But there wouldn't be billboards.
That beautifully-crafted policy has only two major defects that I'm aware of: it wouldn't create tax revenue, and no one but me* supports it.
It wasn't the only defect (at least in my opinion). I have always felt that a grow-your-own-only plan was problematic in that only a very small portion of the population would grow their own (either from the position of ability or desire).
Additionally, something that isn't discussed enough is that marijuana is (and should be) a connoisseur drug, much like certain kinds of alcohol. For example, I have The Balvenie 10-Year single malt scotch for those peaceful evenings when I want honey-smooth relaxation, and I have Lagavulin 16-Year for those bold nights when drinking a campfire stirs my blood.
Cannabis has the potential for working in the same way. Some strains are perfect for watching a funny movie, while others are great for a hike in the woods, or for an evening talking with friends. This cannabis connoisseur approach should be encouraged as it tends toward more responsible use than the marijuana equivalent of binge drinking that is the natural tendency under prohibition.
Just as it is impractical for me to bottle my own Balvenie and Lagavulin, it is impractical for the grow-your own plan to allow for the cannabis connoisseur.
So there clearly needs to be some public sale method, as I indicated in my response to Mark in the comments of this post, when he challenged me to actually propose a legalized option.
Knowing his concerns about commercialization (concerns that bother me much less than him, but I am willing to also look at options that would avoid commercialization), I proposed a legal variation of the Amsterdam model:
Marijuana: Legal to grow non-commercially (no sales, but you can give it away). Also sold to the public through "coffee shops," which are licensed to sell and to contract with growers. Call it the Amsterdam/Starbucks model, where coffee shops can advertise, but brand names cannot. (That stops the Philip Morris model from emerging.) Something more than a grow-your-own is necessary to stop significant black market, since most people will not grow their own. Any level of taxation works as long as they keep pot cheaper than it is now. Regulation should be in the form of insuring that there are no additives and that the production meets basic safety (ie, no mold, etc.)
I don't know if Mark read my response to his challenge or not, but he has now shifted his marijuana legalization position in Second thoughts on "grow your own" pot
This idea [the original grow-your-own] runs into two reasonable objections: It's a bad idea to have one more law that is routinely broken and which can be enforced in an arbitrary way, and it would be an inconvenience to cannabis-smokers not to be have access to professionally-grown material. For example, an open market might lead to labeling various products according to the amounts and ratios of the several different psychoactive chemicals in cannabis. A less potent objection is that if there are no sales there can be no revenue to the government.
Good points. His solution?
That then suggests yet another option: in addition to allowing production for one's own use or for gift, perhaps the law could allow the formation of consumer-owned co-operatives, limited in size, barred from advertising and from selling other than by mail-order. Each co-op would be required to produce its own material rather than buying it from manufacturers or wholesalers. That system would provide much though not all of the convenience, choice, and potential tax revenue of the alcohol model, without creating an another addiction-promotion industry.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Certainly far superior to the grow-your-own-only model (and infinitely better than prohibition), although personally I believe that it's overly cautious.
I'm not sure I understand why mail order only, and I'd be interested in knowing the reasoning. I don't know what dangers are introduced by being able to see and smell your item before purchasing it.
And I'm uncertain about the restriction requiring the coop to sell only what they grow. I'm assuming that there could be some distribution of seeds etc. to allow popular strains to be available in different locations, and today's indoor farming techniques probably make it possible for a coop to provide quite a variety. Additionally, mail order would make it possible for additional cannabis connoisseur approaches (ie, one particular coop specializes in a particularly unique strain.)
It's certainly interesting. I like my coffee shop plan better, but if Mark's idea was the one actually looking possible to happen, I'd be happy to get behind it.
Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of mechanism in our country to try out different ideas? You know, if there were some sub-categories within the country (maybe like 50 different regional areas) with their own sub governments and laws, where you could try something in one of them, and try something else in another one and see which one works better? That sure would be useful.
...
Several readers have suggested that we should put together a collection of legalization options, so I have started the process at LegalizationFacts.com/options. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to collect the suggestions I've given, along with those from other sources (and there are quite a few) and putting them all up there along with pros and cons of each one.
I could use your help. Send me links or references to other proposals for legalization schemes. Even if you think it's unworkable (in which case, let me know why).
CND's failure to embrace harm reduction, and the continued obstruction of a small number of governments to even non-binding statements of support for harm reduction programmes within the Political Declaration, clearly illustrate the degree to which the Commission is not only out of step with the scientific and medical evidence supporting harm reduction, but is also isolated from the mainstream of UN opinion on this key health policy issue.
Remember that unarmed Grand Valley State University student who was shot in the chest by a cop in a drug raid? Turns out that they found a "few tablespoons" of marijuana. Ah... well... OK, then. Carry on.
The student senate is calling for and investigation and students at other neighboring universities are joining in protests.
American drug policy violates basic principles of economics. It seeks to achieve an impossible goal -- eliminating demand and supply [^] while at the same time decentralizing distribution and sales. Rather than confining the market to a few regulated distribution points that operate during set hours, it has allowed the market to flourish by allowing everyone to become a potential dealer.[...]
It's important to note that demand is not at all tied to police interdiction efforts. In fact, the police and government have removed themselves from having anything to do with how the market operates by declaring the product illegal. Demand continues on, unabated by threatened government sanctions, and supply continues to follow. The only contribution the cops make to the transaction is creating a bigger profit margin by adding additional risk for the supplier.
Police Officer Mark Tonner is another one of those strange birds who think that legalizing marijuana would not only not reduce violence, but might increase the violence: Legalizing Pot Won't End Gangs. He ends with this helpful advice to us:
Crying for legalization of marijuana is about as helpful as raising chickens on your patio.
For the masochists here, there is video of drug warrior Joyce Nalepka confronting Rob Kampia at a press conference about the unreliability of drug testing kits.
Balancing THC and CBD for medical value. A very interesting article. Cannabidiol Now! by Fred Gardner.
The full video of the Cato Institute forum The Politics and Science of Medical Marijuana, (featuring Donald Abrams, M.D., Director of Clinical Programs, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, University of California; Robert DuPont, M.D., President, Institute for Behavior and Health; Rob Kampia, Executive Director, Marijuana Policy Project; Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute) is now available online [Thanks Fidelity]
Attorney General Holder reaffirmed policy of not going after medical marijuana clinics that were complying with state laws.
"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law," Holder said. "Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign."
A Justice Department official confirmed that Holder's comments effectively articulated a formal Obama administration policy of not going after such clinics.
Iowa Senator Grassley criticized the Obama administration for this position saying that "the new policy is counterproductive because marijuana leads to use of harder drugs."
Funny, last time I checked Chuck Grassley represented the state of Iowa and only the state of Iowa, which is not one of the thirteen states that have legalized the possession and use of medical cannabis under state law. If Senator Grassley so desperately wants to control what people do in states other than his own perhaps he should consider running for President. Or, better yet, maybe he should just mind his own business!
Via Grits for Breakfast is coverage of the premiere of American Violet - a feature film that fictionally portrays the case of Regina Kelly, who was swept up in a Texas drug bust in Hearne, Texas by a rogue drug task force targeting African Americans and using a single informant. Once the facts came to light, the charges against her were dropped and her record expunged (I got to meet Regina at a national drug policy conference -- quite an amazing lady).
Last week Herald, a Catholic priest better known as Father Bob, circulated through downtown and asked about a dozen shopkeepers to tack up movie posters advertising the 6 p.m. screening. He had watched the film twice, and he thought it instructive and wholesome.
By the next day, he said, most of the posters were in the garbage. Shop owners told Herald that they had been visited by a uniformed investigator from the Robertson County District Attorney's Office who suggested the movie was full of lies and anti-law enforcement and that their businesses might suffer unless the posters were removed.
"They felt intimidated," Herald said. [...]
Regina Kelly is also trying to get an apology from District Attorney John Paschall
That's doubtful. While Paschall did not return Chronicle calls, he did have some pithy statements for the Dallas Morning News:
"The only way I'd watch (the movie), I'd have to be handcuffed, tied to a chair and you'd have to tape my eyes open."
Scott also notes some encouraging news in legal areas regarding the use of informants
As Texas considers bills to corroborate and ensure reliability of jailhouse informant testimony, I was interested to see that bipartisan legislation moving in Florida takes a different tack on regulating confidential informants. Reports AP:
The proposed bill would create strict standards on the use of confidential informants and give them the right to talk to an attorney before agreeing to help police.
It would not allow people in drug treatment programs to be used in undercover drug operations.
Plus, the plan would prevent a nonviolent offender from being involved in any undercover operation involving weapons or suspects with violent criminal records.
To concentrate Federal resources aimed at the prosecution of drug offenses on those offenses that are major.
Some great statements made in the bill language:
(1) Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget increased from $220 million in 1986 to $5.4 billion in 2008.
(2) Mandatory minimum sentences are statutorily prescribed terms of imprisonment that automatically attach upon conviction of certain criminal conduct, usually pertaining to drug or firearm offenses. Absent very narrow criteria for relief, a sentencing judge is powerless to mandate a term of imprisonment below the mandatory minimum. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses rely solely upon the weight of the substance as a proxy for the degree of involvement of a defendant's role.
(3) Mandatory minimum sentences have consistently been shown to have a disproportionate impact on African Americans. The United States Sentencing Commission, in a 15-year overview of the Federal sentencing system, concluded that [OE]mandatory penalty statutes are used inconsistently' and disproportionately affect African American defendants. As a result, African American drug defendants are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants. [...]
(5) Between 1994 and 2003, the average time served by African Americans for a drug offense increased by 62 percent, compared with a 17 percent increase among white drug defendants. Much of this disparity is attributable to the severe penalties associated with crack cocaine.
(6) African Americans, on average, now serve almost as much time in Federal prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months).
(7) Linking drug quantity with punishment severity has had a particularly profound impact on women, who are more likely to play peripheral roles in a drug enterprise than men. However, because prosecutors can attach drug quantities to an individual regardless of the level of culpability of a defendant's participation in the charged offense, women have been exposed to increasingly punitive sentences to incarceration. [...]
(9) Low-level and mid-level drug offenders can be adequately prosecuted by the States and punished or supervised in treatment as appropriate.
(10) Federal drug enforcement resources are not being properly focused, as only 12.8 percent of powder cocaine prosecutions and 8.4 percent of crack cocaine prosecutions were brought against high-level traffickers, according to the Report to Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, issued May, 2007 by the United States Sentencing Commission. [...]
(12) The Departments of Justice, Treasury, and Homeland Security are the agencies with the greatest capacity to investigate, prosecute and dismantle the highest level of drug trafficking organizations, and investigations and prosecutions of low-level offenders divert Federal personnel and resources from the prosecution of the highest-level traffickers, for which such agencies are best suited.[...]
(14) One consequence of the improper focus of Federal cocaine prosecutions has been that the overwhelming majority of low-level offenders subject to the heightened crack cocaine penalties are black and according to the Report to Congress only 8.8 percent of Federal crack cocaine convictions were imposed on whites, while 81.8 percent and 8.4 percent were imposed on blacks and Hispanics, respectively [...]
(18) According to the Justice Department, the time spent in prison does not affect recidivism rates.
The bill also expressly requires the approval of the Attorney General to prosecute a case where the quantity of drugs is not major (in the case of cocaine, less than 500 grams), leaving small cases to the states.
This looks like a good bill, that could reasonably get some political traction as it essentially comes across as saving money by going after the big guys.
It's been over 4 years since Cheryl Noel was shot to death by cops in her bedroom. (My first coverage here.)
There's no doubt that Cheryl was a Drug War Victim, but there were a lot of unanswered questions, and I've been waiting since then for more information with a standing news alert for her name.
Well, now perhaps the truth will come out (or at least more information. Her family is suing Baltimore County and the trial started this week. Peter Hermann covers it and it's going to be contentious.
The way the attorney for the family suing Baltimore County describes it, heavily armed paramilitary police officers carrying ballistic shields and dressed in camouflage stormed a suburban Dundalk house over trace amounts of drugs without knocking and fatally shot a "devoted mother and wife" armed with a legally registered handgun to defend herself from intruders.
The way the attorney defending the police officers and the county describes it, professionally trained members of the SWAT team raided a suspected narcotics den containing marijuana and cocaine that was occupied by a convicted murderer with access to weapons and a teenager who had just shot another youth in a fight, resulting in the shooting of a woman holding a gun who refused to comply with the cop's commands.
Peter Hermann is also following the case on his Baltimore Crime Beat blog. He's already got a an incredibly detailed post going over all the preliminary statements by the attorneys, along with copies of the lawsuit and a police report detailing items removed.
It's good to have someone on the ground following the lawsuit closely.
It leads off with Glenn Loury (whose work on race and incarceration I've talked about before), who has an excellent essay: A Nation of Jailers
He fully admits that he writes from a position of race sensitivity, and when covering our prison population, it's pretty hard to avoid talking about race. And he makes a point about how policy can be inherently racist even when individuals or individual arrests/prosecutions are not.
But the sum of a million cases, each one rightly judged fairly on its individual merits, may nevertheless constitute a great historic wrong. This is, in my view, now the case in regards to the race and social class disparities that characterize the very punitive policy that we have directed at lawbreakers. And yet, the state does not only deal with individual cases. It also makes policies in the aggregate, and the consequences of these policies are more or less knowable. It is in the making of such aggregate policy judgments that questions of social responsibility arise.
He doesn't talk specifically about the drug war, but you can see powerfully it in his writing.
There's a lot of good stuff there (it's a long essay) and I'm not going to highlight all of it, but there was another point which I though was important -- in a way of pre-empting what he knew would be coming from the "broken-windows" respondents -- discussion of the value of the lives of those incarcerated (something that's often left out of discussions of the value of imprisonment).
Consider, for instance, that it is not possible to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of our nation's world-historic prison buildup over the past 35 years without implicitly specifying how the costs imposed on the persons imprisoned, and their families, are to be reckoned. Of course, this has not stopped analysts from pronouncing on the purported net benefits to "society" of greater incarceration without addressing that question! Still, how -- or, indeed, whether -- to weigh the costs born by law-breakers -- that is, how (or whether) to acknowledge their humanity -- remains a fundamental and difficult question of social ethics. Political discourses in the United States have given insufficient weight to the collateral damage imposed by punishment policies on the offenders themselves, and on those who are knitted together with offenders in networks of social and psychic affiliation.
He dances around a bunch of disputed data about the relationship between prison numbers and societal safety and comes up with such statements as:
America is more punitive, but except for homicide, it is also safer. The key moral and political question is whether our greater personal safety is worth our greater use of prison.
Actually, no. That is not the key moral question, and additionally, the facts don't show that our level of incarceration is needed to obtain personal safety. (The notion that greater incarceration means greater safety leads to absurd end results.)
He also uses his time-honored tradition of looking at only one part of the puzzle when discussing race.
There is an even more important question: Why is it that so large a percentage of African Americans spend time in prison? We cannot say that it is because America is "racist." Racism exists here, but it cannot account for the fact that the racial identity of people who commit assaults and robberies is almost exactly the same as the racial identity of people who go to prison for those crimes.
This is very close to a statement he made some time ago when guest-blogging at Volokh
Do police excessively arrest blacks? "The race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data."
Last I heard, not everyone was in prison for assault or robbery. A few were in there for drug crimes. And some of them may even be black. And the "crime victims" of drug crime don't exist. ("Officer, officer, someone just sold me some drugs. And he was black!")
This is a piece full of absurdity and trickery, that misses the big picture, while trotting out "I care" statements from a position of utter ignorance of the true situation.
He comes up with statements like:
If we punish black criminals a lot, isn't it possible that the reason we are doing it is because we care about the black victims?
He also has a fascinating detour, where he complains that wealthy individuals are hurt more than poor blacks when sent to prison because they lose more money.
The criminal justice system discriminates against higher-income criminals...
Finally, he makes statements like:
Nor does he recognize how extremely progressive criminal penalties are. [...] criminal penalties are already extremely progressive.
Huh?
I was floored by that, until I realized that apparently he's using the word "progressive" here like it's used in income tax terms (higher tax as the income goes higher). In other words, he's back on his kick that the wealthy are disproportionately penalized in the prison system.
In fact, "progressive," when referring to prison, should be defined as the active striving for better conditions, or moving forward. A progressive prison system would focus on rehabilitation, not retribution. Progressive prison penalties wouldn't put give drug crimes more emphasis than crimes of violence, nor would they give those who have nobody to rat on higher sentences than bigger criminals who can lie about others.
There's still another response coming from Bruce Western (probably today) and then probably some back and forth. If you're interested in the whole prison and race question, this is an excellent series to read.
Update: Bruce Western's response piece Race, Crime, and Punishment is right on the money. His analysis is cogent and reasoned, and the studies back him up fully.
Because of the social costs of punishment -- in the lost earnings and broken families of ex-prisoners -- the seeds of recidivism are sown by incarceration itself. Ex-prisoners, without jobs or family ties, are more likely to re-offend. More fundamentally, the poor and minority communities that are disparately policed and punished come to view law enforcement, the courts, and the jails with suspicion and not as sources of legitimate order and support. We have few estimates of how much distrust in criminal justice institutions increases crime, though the effects may be very large.
The evidence I've reviewed indicates that mass incarceration has produced a public safety that is short-term, expensive, and vulnerable to reversal. Mass incarceration deepens inequalities in economic opportunities and family life, and receives little positive support from the communities it regulates most closely. The failure of the system is due exactly to the kind of social exclusion that Glenn Loury described.
Working with Witness and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, we cut together excerpts from "Dare to Question? Using Video to Take on UN Drug Policies" and other testimonials appealing to the United Nations to reconsider its hardline policies combating the cultivation and use of illicit drugs.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy's "blog" has a good post about the dangers of accidental poisoning: Is Your Home Safe?
National Poison Prevention Week is a good time for people with young children to ensure that kitchen cabinets, medicine cabinets and other storage areas are kept locked, or have child-proof latches, if they contain potentially harmful products. Garages, too, are important areas to check. Be sure that pesticides or other poisons are locked up or well out of children's reach.
This is also a good time for adults to check possible interactions between the different drugs they take, especially if they are taking a prescription painkiller.
They also link to a useful tip sheet (for instance, did you know that anti-freeze tastes sweet to dogs and cats?).
...
(boy, that was a weird post to write -- I feel like I'm momentarily in some kind of bizarro world, where government programs are actually designed to help people rather than hurt them)
Featuring Donald Abrams, M.D., Director of Clinical Programs, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, University of California; Robert DuPont, M.D., President, Institute for Behavior and Health; Rob Kampia, Executive Director, Marijuana Policy Project; Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute
Imagine you had a really smart bomb - a genius bomb - that could blow up the leaders of every drug cartel in Mexico.
By the time the smoke cleared, a new pusher would be sitting in every cartel's big chair and the distribution networks would continue satisfying the demand of every junkie and recreational-drug user in America. [...]
Now, imagine a different weapon.
Consider the impact of eliminating the most profitable product the cartels sell.
All we have to do is legalize marijuana.
It's a very good piece and she uses all the drug warriors' arguments against them by simply setting up her unimpeachable premise and then quoting their usual stuff.
I love this line, of course:
You'd think a country built on capitalism would understand basic laws of supply and demand. Instead, a failed and irrational national policy blunders forward, costing billions, incarcerating large numbers of people and enriching ruthless crime syndicates.
Update: Also see Debra J. Saunders at Townhall: The Drug War Body Count. Good article, but the check out some of the ignorant commenters:
Doug writes:
It is an understatement to say that you are stupid if you believe that prohibition causes this type of violence.
The people who control this industry are not moral people. They will not simply roll over and be good little sunday school students simply because you tell them it is now legal.
They will conduct their business with the same disrespect for the law, and will laugh at your "regulators" the same way they shoot your peace officers.
Naive band of idiots.
Lolo1 says:
Doug: Well said!
Lolo1 also says:
Amazing!
I see people here honestly think that drug pushers are going to suddenly come out of the shadows and pay taxes and go legitimate.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Um, no, Lolo and Doug. Enterprising Americans will leap at the chance to make money by selling drugs legally and yes, even happily pay taxes. And then anybody who wants to sell drug on the black market will become mostly irrelevant, forced to search for new income sources. It's really not rocket science, folks.
On the key issue of illegal drugs--the widely recognized source of criminal power in Mexico--the Obama administration is lurching dangerously in reverse. In his first statement on drug policy, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested he may no longer enforce federal law against trafficking marijuana if the traffickers call their marijuana medical. Both U.S. and Mexican officials at all levels know that medical marijuana is an utter fraud used to undermine drug enforcement in the United States. Mexican officials also know (as does the Justice Department) that much of the marijuana sold in the "dispensaries" of California funds the mafias of Mexico.
Marijuana sales are the single largest source of drug profits for these criminals--on top of funds from kidnapping, protection rackets, alien smuggling, and car theft. Not enforcing our marijuana laws makes these terrorists stronger. Pretending to take legalization seriously makes them stronger still. What do we think the brave officers risking their lives in Mexico feel when our attorney general sounds like he is going to do less to help? Is it too much to expect him to make clear that enforcing our marijuana laws reduces addiction here and saves lives in Mexico?
John Walters has got a lot of experience outright lying, using creative ways to combine totally unrelated things to imply a relationship, and just blatantly attempting to claim that outcomes of prohibition are really outcomes of legalization.
But this is a high point even for him. Rarely do you see such a jam-packed couple of paragraphs -- full of fear-mongering, lies, and multiple types of fallacies perfectly demonstrated.
What is important to know about an unarmed student who gets shot in the chest by the cops?
Radley Balko's been covering the case of Derek Copp, a Grand Rapids student who was shot in the chest by a cop during a drug raid. The police still won't release whether any drugs were found or, as Radley puts it "why one deputy felt the need to shoot the guy." (They have admitted that Copp was unarmed and that there was no confrontation.)
So it seems, based on available facts, we're talking about a student who possibly smokes some pot, and may not even sell any, and an armed drug raid that involved shooting an unarmed young man in the chest who was raising his arm to cover his eyes from the flashlights shining in his eyes.
Unfortunately, as we all know, this kind of thing is all too common (and Copp is lucky to be alive).
Here's the bizarre thing: Guess what the Grand Rapids News decided was relevant and important to investigate?
Copp, 20, declares himself a "left wing hippie peace-keeping liberal," on his Facebook page, which frequently quotes Grateful Dead lyrics and highlights his other favorite items. Among the listings:
[apple] Copp lists SMOKA DA BOLSKI as an interest.
[apple] Groups Copp has joined include "Vote 'Yes' for Medical Marijuana in Michigan" and LEGALIZATION.
[apple] His preferred movies include drug diaries "Bongwater," "How High," and "Drugstore Cowboy" in addition to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino flicks.
[apple] Favored quotes are: "Give peace a chance," and "Life isn't like a bowl of cherries or peaches, it's more like a jar of Jalapenos -- what you do today, might burn your --- tomorrow ..."
Hey, don't blame the cops. We only enforce the law, we don't make it.
It's something we hear quite often, but of course it just isn't true.
For more than five years, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Lt. Barbara Ferguson has been helping the men and women of the department protect the public.
But instead of a gun and badge, Ferguson relies on her powers of persuasion as she maneuvers through the state Capitol and the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C., serving as the Sheriff's Department's legislative liaison. The High Desert resident lobbies legislators to help pass or defeat bills that affect public safety and the Sheriff's Department. [..]
Ferguson is not only instrumental in lobbying for the passage of bills but also for the defeat of bills that will hinder the ability of law enforcement to keep communities safe.
"There is currently legislation that will attempt to legalize the use and cultivation of marijuana, and we are opposed to that," she said, adding that marijuana is a gateway drug that can lead to other harder drugs. "We have a big fight on our hands with that."
Translation: Our marijuana prohibition laws cause criminal activity and make the public less safe. They also damage our relationship and trust with the public, making it harder to keep the public safe. But prohibition laws give us more power and more money, so we'll keep lobbying for them.
Harold Pollack in the New Republic: 
