Chronicle AM: GOP Rep. Tackles Forfeiture, OR Measure 91 Support, CA Dispensary Troubles, More (10/24/14)

Submitted by Phillip Smith on (Issue #858)
Consequences of Prohibition

James Sensenbrenner is on the asset forfeiture case, Oregon's Measure 91 picks up some big name endorsements, dispensaries get shut down in San Diego and raided by the DEA in LA, fallout continues in the case of the missing Mexican student teachers, and more. Let's get to it:

[image:1 align:left caption:true]Asset Forfeiture

Key GOP Lawmaker Questions Asset Forfeiture Seizures. US Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chair of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, today sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to provide documents and data related to the Justice Department's role in more than 60,000 cash and property seizures under the department's Equitable Sharing Program with state and local law enforcement agencies. "While we must ensure law enforcement is properly equipped, they should not be funded by slush funds accrued by violating Americans' civil liberties," Sensenbrenner said in a statement today. "The implications on civil liberties are dire," he said in the letter. "The right to own property is a fundamental right implicitly recognized in the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. I also believe that it is a human right." Sensenbrenner sent similar letters to the DEA and Department of Homeland Security last week, after a Washington Post investigation that found that 61,998 cash seizures of more than $2.5 billion have been made since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through Equitable Sharing.

Marijuana Policy

Marijuana Policy Expert Mark Kleiman Says Yes on Oregon's Measure 91. He grumbled, but in the end, academic marijuana policy expert and Washington state legalization implementation maven Mark Kleiman has come down in favor of Oregon's Measure 91 marijuana legalization initiative. Even though he says the initiative doesn't reflect "a sophisticated understanding of the problems of illegal markets or a nuanced view about substance abuse disorder" and says that claims that legalization will reduce youth access to marijuana don't pass "the giggle test," "the choice Oregon voters face isn't between what's on the ballot and some perfectly designed cannabis policy; it's between what's on the ballot and continued prohibition at the state level, until and unless a better initiative can be crafted, put before the voters, and passed into law." Bottom line? "It's not an easy choice; as a Californian, I'm glad I don't have to make one like it (yet). But if I had to vote in Oregon, I'd vote 'Yes.'" Click on the link to read the whole piece.

Oregon US Senator Jeff Merkley Says He Will Probably Vote Yes on Measure 91. US Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has said he is inclined vote in favor of the Measure 91 marijuana legalization initiative. "I think folks on both sides of the argument make a good case," Merkley said. "And there is concern about a series of new products -- and we don't have a real track record from Colorado and Washington. But I feel on balance that we spend a lot of money on our criminal justice system in the wrong places and I lean in favor of this ballot measure." If he does vote yes, he will become the first US senator to support legalizing marijuana in his home state.

Medical Marijuana

Four San Diego Dispensaries Shut Down By Court Order. San Diego authorities won court orders earlier this week to close four dispensaries they said were operating illegally in the city. All four had closed their doors by Wednesday. The city has just adopted a permitting process for dispensaries and the first permit was handed out recently, but a number of dispensaries are operating in the city without permits. The city has shut down more than 200 unpermitted dispensaries since 2009, the city attorney's office said.

DEA Raids Two Los Angeles Dispensaries. DEA agents Thursday raided two Los Angeles dispensaries that staffers claim were fully compliant with state laws. Raiders hit two locations of The Farmacy, one in West Hollywood and one in Westwood, seizing cash, computers, and medical marijuana. No arrests were made. The Farmacy's Venice Beach location wasn't hit, but staffers said they thought that was because it had recently moved and the DEA couldn't find it.

Drug Testing

Key West Job Offer Drug Test Case to Go to Jury. A Florida woman who sued the city of Key West for rescinding a job offer after she refused to take a pre-employment drug test will have to seek damages before a jury, a federal judge has ruled. Karen Voss had sued, arguing that all suspicionless, pre-employment drug tests were unconstitutional, and she won a summary judgment holding the city liable. She then filed a second motion seeking financial relief for her losses. US District Judge James Lawrence King ruled that a jury must determine what damages, if any, will be awarded, but he did not address whether mandatory, pre-employment drug testing was constitutional.

International

Irish Report Finds Drug Law Enforcement Has Little Impact on Drug Availability. In a study commissioned by the Irish government's drug advisory body, the National Committee on Drugs and Alcohol, researchers have found that the availability of drugs is "largely unaffected" by law enforcement anti-drug operations and recommended that police focus on drug markets causing the most community harm. Both police and dealers agreed that police operations had "no impact on availability" other than temporary reductions because of stiff competition, massive profits, and a steady demand for drugs. The 328-page report is Illicit Drug Markets in Ireland.

Mexico Missing Student Teacher Scandal Forces Guerrero's Governor to Resign. Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre Thursday said he was taking a leave of absence. He is not expected to return to office. Aguirre becomes the highest ranking politician yet to fall victim to the festering scandal over the case of 43 radical student teachers missing for more than a month after being seized by local police forces and Guerreros Unidos drug gang members working hand-in-hand with them. The mayor of Iguala, the city where they were seized, and his wife, also face arrest, but they have fled. Several mass graves have been found in the search for the students, but the bodies in them don't appear to be the students. The case has seen mass protests in Mexico City, as well as violent protests in the Iguala and Chilpancingo, the capital of the state.

Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Comments

malcolmkyle (not verified)

Kindly google "Kleiman is a prohibitionist" and you'll see articles going back decades.

"Third, even on those rare occasions where Kleiman does not endorse prohibitionist policy, his analysis is infused with a prohibitionist morality. In his often superb chapter on marijuana, his evidence forces him to consider alternatives. Yet he is reluctant at every turn. He brings himself to admit that the costs of the current prohibition (e.g. each year 350 000 arrests and up to 10 billion dollars in enforcement costs and lost revenue) are probably too great for the 'benefits' received. But he still conceives of the alleged deterrent value of prohibition as a benefit, and again implies that he believes marijuana use is in itself somehow 'bad'." 

Prohibitionism in Drug Policy Discourse by Craig Reinarman, University of California, Santa Cruz, 

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DRUG POLICY, 1994. VOL 5 NO 2.

"He also bases his support for prohibition on the fact that the criminal justice system does not do a good enough job of preventing drug-related crime. Most informed observers, however, trace many of the problems in our criminal justice system to the burden and corruption placed on it by narcotics prohibition. Finally, I would note that even Mr. Kleiman realizes that only a small percentage of the population develops abuse problems with any specific drug and that we do not know what makes a given person have an abuse problem with a given drug. Why then does he recommend a nationwide policy that is oppressive, impersonal, and ineffective? "

—Mark Thornton, Auburn University.

A Review of Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results, 1992. 

"There’s one problem with legalizing, taxing and regulating cannabis at the state level: It can’t be done. The federal Controlled Substances Act makes it a felony to grow or sell cannabis. California can repeal its own marijuana laws, leaving enforcement to the feds. But it can’t legalize a federal felony. Therefore, any grower or seller paying California taxes on marijuana sales or filing pot-related California regulatory paperwork would be confessing, in writing, to multiple federal crimes. And that won’t happen."

—Mark Kleiman, LA Times, 2010.

"Kleiman is a tee-totaler sado-moralist who believes intoxication is a disease."  —Allan Erickson, The Media Awareness Project

"D.A.R.E. is a wonderful tool for police-community relations, particularly, in poor neighborhoods. Getting poor kids to meet a police officer, and getting a police officer to meet poor kids, on a civil, friendly basis, is a wonderful thing to do. Police officers love it, and police departments love it, and neighborhoods love it, and kids love it and parents love it and everybody loves it." —Mark Kleiman 1997

“I’ve been going around the country trying to convince people that knowing the unsatisfactory results of marijuana prohibition doesn’t prove that any specific implementation of legal marijuana will turn out to be an improvement.” —Mark Kleiman, 2013

“I’ve been going around the country trying to convince people that knowing the unsatisfactory results of alcohol prohibition doesn’t prove that any specific implementation of legal alcohol will turn out to be an improvement.” —Mark Kleiman’s grandfather, 1933

Sat, 10/25/2014 - 7:27am Permalink
TOPDOG1 (not verified)

EVERYTHING BUT THE GOOSE STEP. What next? Going into emergency rooms and arresting accident victims and doctors for using pain medication. The D.E.A. and the F.D.A. are becoming Americas version of the S.S. These out of control authoritarian socio paths need to be restrained. It is time for us all to stop the  funding and the the untold billions in grant funding they have miss-used, miss-appropriated and commandeered. The States don't need the D.E.A. I don't need the D.E.A. You don't need the D.E.A. We don't need the D.E.A. Nobody needs the D.E.A. Other  countries that allow access to pain medication don't have a drug problem.The sooner the D.E.A. ,F.D.A. and other law enforcement groups are either controlled or redirected the sooner the drug problem will go away. The D.E.A. was a bad idea from the start and it has gotten worse. It is time to cut funding for their war on drugs which has turned into an all-out war on the American people that targets mostly pot smokers and the homeless and now doctors and anybody with enough wealth or property to seize.

Sun, 10/26/2014 - 12:57am Permalink

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