Drug War Chronicle #520 - January 25, 2008

Editorial: Poverty and the Drug Laws

David Borden, Executive Director

Any given week in the drug war, scanning the news about it will reveal a veritable snowstorm of drug war outrages and calamities. Most of them we don't even report about here in Drug War Chronicle, because they're just too commonplace, and we'd need an army of reporters instead just the one we have. But even just looking here, in any given week, it is vividly clear just how many different directions and in how many different ways the drug laws howl against us:

• no-knock raids

• lying snitches
• stolen medical marijuana
• firing over medical marijuana
• drug taxes
• harassment of AIDS prevention workers
• corruption of police forces, with civil conflict
• nonsensical diplomacy
• many, many more.

As we fight against the drug war's many currents, it's also important to look to our roots, the basic wrongs, the awful tragedies, that are inherent in drug prohibition itself. One of those tragedies, one which played significantly in my own choice of cause, is the worsening and the sustaining of urban poverty.

The drug laws keep urban neighborhoods in poverty in two particular ways. One is the violence and the disorder that prohibition causes. As alcohol prohibition last century fed the Mafia, today's drug prohibition laws create a large and ever-present underground market. Because people who are breaking the law can't go to the police to complain when other lawbreakers violate their rights, disputes instead are governed by violence or the threat of it. And because they are already criminals, drug selling organizations, instead of advertising, may willingly resort to violence to increase their share of the market instead. Hence the drive-by shootings, the assassinations from deals gone bad, etc. Even when outright violence doesn't break out, illegal drug transactions, whether on the open street, in a hallway or a schoolyard, affect the climate of life and create a sense of disorder. This creates danger for bystanders, drives away legitimate business, and generally makes life hard.

The second most serious way in which our drug laws contribute to poverty, at least in their current form of enforcement, is the mass criminalization -- arrest, incarceration, criminal records -- that has been thrust through intensive policing upon certain groups of people. Research by the Sentencing Project, for example, has found that on any given day, as many as one in three young black males are under some form of correctional control -- prison, jail, probation or parole. This number is not entirely for drug offenses, of course, but as the Sentencing Project has made the case for, the "war on drugs" has been the driving force in a growth in incarceration in this country going far beyond any historical precedent.

The simplistic "if you break the law, you should be punished" argument pales when set beside the massive shredding of community and family ties produced by this malignantly careening government program; or the training for crime these young people get when imprisoned; or the temptation for so many to take the opportunity when offered to make money now and be part of something that sounds more interesting than the typical legal job that's available to them. Plus what happens, even to those who didn't have to do jail time, when their criminal records show up on a potential employer's computer screen? We hear from people facing this situation all the time, and it is a major national problem. Even mere arrest records can show up and thwart someone's best efforts to go the straight and narrow route. What are some of them going to do then? We know the program doesn't work either -- the drugs are still here, after all, and in force.

In a realistic worldview, substance abuse would be viewed as an expected part of the human condition for some people, an issue with which society would seek the best ways to live with, rather than suppress and "fight" through the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the visible agonies of those struggling with addiction, and of those whose actions they most deeply affect, have prevented a widespread understanding from dawning of the vice grip the drug laws exert in fueling poverty, and the obstacles they place in the way of efforts to address it.

By looking back to our intellectual roots, it is clear that this message is one that must be repeated over and over until it is heard by the many and sinks in. When that happens, legalization will be seen as the wiser course, and new hopes built upon solid foundations will emerge.

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Feature: Faced With Slashed Federal Grants, Drug Task Forces Howl... and Plot to Get Their Funding Back

For years, Congress has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants through the Justice Action Grant (JAG)/Byrne grant program to aid state and local anti-drug efforts, with much of the money going to multi-jurisdictional drug task forces, the controversial multi-agency police squads who make prosecuting the drug war their livelihood. But funding for the program was dramatically slashed in the omnibus federal budget passed a few weeks ago, and ever since, a curious phenomenon has occurred: In newspapers across the land, stories with headlines like these have been popping up: Grant Cut Threatens Narcotics Task Force (Kentucky), Drug Task Force Discusses Grant Cut (Georgia), Cuts Could Affect Local Drug Task Force (Iowa).

That's no accident. The spate of stories bemoaning the sorry state of the multi-jurisdictional anti-drug task forces is part of a campaign by law enforcement and state and local elected officials to restore the $350 million hit the JAG/Byrne grant program took this year. Ron Brooks, executive director of the National Narcotics Officers Associations Coalition told the Chronicle Tuesday that the coalition to restore grant funding had managed to get 120 stories or letters to the editor like those above published so far.

Funded at $520 million last year, the two-decade old program that allows states to supplement their anti-drug spending with federal tax dollars was already down substantially from previous funding levels. For the past three years, as a cost-cutting move, the Bush administration has tried to zero it out completely, but that has proven extremely unpopular with Congress. This year, the House voted to fund the block grant portion of the program at $600 million and the Senate at $660 million, but in last-minute budget negotiations, the White House insisted the funding be cut.

"The Democrats wanted to restore Bush's previous cuts to the program," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). "In fact, they wanted to increase it over last year, but it was Bush's hard-stance on domestic spending that forced them to cut the program at the end. The Democrats, and most Republicans, wanted to restore the funding."

Now, Brooks and his allies are regrouping to seek renewed funding in a supplemental appropriations bill this year. "The Byrne grants are really the only funding stream to help chiefs and sheriffs participate in multi-jurisdictional drug task forces," said Brooks. "This means task forces around the country will close, and we will no longer be able to focus multi-jurisdictional effort on drug trafficking organizations -- we'll be back to picking the low-hanging fruit."

"Trying to get more funding through a supplemental appropriations bill will be an uphill battle," DPA's Piper predicted. "It will be either the war funding or the economic stimulus bill, and both are going to be very expensive. Politically, there is only so much money they can put in those bills if they want to pass them. And if they try to attach it to the Iraq funding, we can argue that every dollar going to the cops is a dollar taken from the soldiers."

But failing to fund the task forces could lead to increased criminality, Brooks warned. "We can show the nexus between drugs and crime and gangs," he said. "We anticipate increases in violent crime because of this."

"We're very upset by the cutback," said Don Murray, legislative director for justice and public safety for the National Association of Counties (NACO), which is part of the coalition seeking redress. "The Byrne/JAG program is a major systemic approach to dealing with crime."

It may be a systemic approach, but it is a system that has been the site of scandalous abuses and one that has been roundly criticized by everyone from tax-watch groups to civil libertarians. It was federally funded Texas drug task forces that committed the Tulia and Hearne scandals, where large numbers of minority citizens were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned on nonexistent evidence, and that was only the tip of the iceberg in the Lone Star State. Drug task forces are also involved in some of those horrendous drug botched raids that have left a toll of dead civilians, suspects, and police officers. On a more banal level, drug task force members have made regular appearances in our Corrupt Cops Stories of the Week feature.

In the wake of the Tulia scandal and other task force scandals in her home state and beyond, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) introduced a 2005 bill to rein in the task forces. While that bill never went anywhere, the Bush budget ax may accomplish more than Jackson-Lee ever dreamed.

At the time, Jesselyn McCurdy, an ACLU legislative counsel, addressed the problems with the task forces: "These drug task forces around the country haven't had to answer to anyone," she said. "As a result of this lack of state and federal oversight, they've been at the center of the some of the country's most egregious law enforcement abuse scandals. The law enforcement agents involved in these scandals weren't just a few bad apples," McCurdy said.

The JAG/Byrne grant program that funds the task forces seeded the above litany of abuses "has proved to be an ineffective and inefficient use of resources," said four conservative tax-payer organizations -- American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens against Government Waste, and National Taxpayers Union -- in a 2005 statement calling for the Bush administration to zero out funding.

While most attention around the grant program is centered on the funding of the drug task forces, NACO's Murray said, the money also pays for other drug policy costs. "The program covers law enforcement, courts, corrections, prevention, and drug treatment," he said. "When you look at these programs at the local level, JAG is crucial," he said.

When asked why state and local authorities don't fund their own law enforcement initiatives, Murray said they already do, but it isn't enough. "In 2002, we commissioned a survey of county criminal justice spending, and we found that the counties were spending $53 billion a year on it," he said. "But given all the issues we face -- reentry, the mentally ill behind bars, healthcare -- it isn't enough."

Law enforcement and its allies are mobilizing, Brooks said. "Nobody saw this coming," he said. "We formed a working group back in 2005, when these cuts were first proposed, mostly of national associations, and now we have some 30 groups representing almost a million members. We've got everybody from drug court judges to NACO to the National Association of Police Chiefs and the National Association of Attorneys General. Getting the funding back is the sole purpose of our coalition," he said.

The coalition will be working a two-track approach, he said. "We will try to encourage the leadership of Congress to restore this money in a supplemental funding vehicle, either the economic stimulus or the war funding supplemental, but that will only happen if the leadership opens the door," he said. "We're also doing grassroots work back in our communities. That's how the 120 articles got published."

While DPA's Piper said that restoring the grant funding would be an uphill battle, his organization is doing its best to counter the law enforcement offensive. "We will be working the Hill, trying to do some push-back in the media, and reaching out to taxpayer and conservative groups that have traditionally supported eliminating this program," Piper said. "But the real question is whether Bush will stand his ground and whether Republicans will back him."

President Bush has proven to be an unlikely ally in the fight to rein in federal funding of the drug war, but Congress appears vulnerable to pressure from the men with badges. And they're working hard: When Brooks spoke with the Chronicle this week, he was in the Hart Senate Office Building on his way to lobby staffers.

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In Memoriam: Judge Eleanor Schockett of LEAP

Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition wrote the following memorial for one of LEAP's most active leaders, Judge Eleanor Schockett. We reprint it from the LEAP web site.

I am very sad to have to report that Judge Eleanor Levingston Schockett died Saturday, January 12, 2008, at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

Eleanor was a close friend, a colleague, and an unbeatable advocate for sensible thinking in a world that is desperately in need of such people.

I had the pleasure of spending several weeks in the company of Judge Schockett over the last four years. Eleanor joined LEAP by email, July 2, 2003 saying:

"I retired from the circuit bench Dec.31, 2002. (I served two six-year terms). I was referred to this organization by John Chase of the November organization. My interest in this subject dates back to 1958 when I wrote my senior paper at Tulane Law School on the administration of the drug laws in the United States. Matters have only gotten worse in the intervening years as I observed when in the Criminal Division of the Court. The main reason I did not take senior judge status is that I wanted to have my civil rights back, so I could speak out on political as well as judicial issues. I am in full agreement with your mission statement and would like to do whatever I can to contribute to a more responsible drug policy."

It wasn't very long before we realized we must recruit her as a member of the LEAP Board of Directors. Eleanor sat through what seemed at the time to be endless hours of board meetings as we shaped our organization. Her advice was always clear and concise. On many occasions she saved us from making major mistakes.

In those four years, Eleanor never turned down a venue arranged to present LEAP's goal to end drug prohibition. She was absolutely tireless. I had the honor of traveling with Eleanor and retired Detective Chief Superintendent of Scotland Yard, Eddie Ellison, to New Zealand. In two-weeks we made 90 presentations in that country. Then we were off to a week at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

My wife accompanied us on that trip and became another of Eleanor's many friends. Eleanor visited us at our home in Medford, Massachusetts many times.

Eleanor fought cancer for the last year, but after a regime of chemotherapy thought she had beaten it. She never complained about her own plight. She told me how ridiculous it was that doctors in North Carolina would charge her $105 per pill to alleviate the nausea caused by her chemo treatment when a simple marijuana cigarette would have accomplished the same thing -- without the side effects. She said that just made her more determined to work to end prohibition of all drugs.

Judge Schockett traveled to New Orleans last December to join 1,200 of us at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference. She spoke on one of the panels and helped us plan our strategy for our continued struggle.

We will all miss her wonderful sense of humor and her biting wit. She was never shy about stating her views on drug policy or about standing up for people in need. When I think of all I have learned from Eleanor and all the ways she has touched my life I feel very sad to have lost her, and that with only this relatively short amount of time with her. I can not imagine how her family feels after knowing Eleanor for a lifetime. Without her LEAP will not be the same. But I can almost hear Eleanor repeating Joe Hill's famous words as he faced his imminent death, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."

We will miss her.

Watch Judge Shockett's DrugTruth Network interview in New Orleans here.

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Appeal: DRCNet Made Amazing Progress in 2007 and We Need Your Help for 2008

Dear DRCNet reader:

StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) is at a very interesting and promising point, and I am writing to seek your support for our organization at this time. In brief, first, and then in more depth:

1. We have enormously increased our web site visitation, with most of the increase being new people who don't read about drug policy or legalization on a regular basis. We have achieved this by capturing an audience share on the popular "Web 2.0" sites like Digg.com where readers nominate and vote on which articles should go to "the top," the only drug reform group to achieve this success on an ongoing basis.
2. We have taken concrete steps to expand the range of issues in which we actively do advocacy including: the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT raids in drug cases with the sometimes deadly consequences (visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for further information); the penalties for drug offenders and their families in welfare and public housing law, expanding the major coalition we've already built on the similar college aid law; and continued work on the college aid law. We have taken initial steps to engage the Afghanistan opium issue as well.
3. We have expanded our public education efforts on the drug prohibition/legalization question itself, with more on the way (http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization).
4. We have continued the most important aspects of our program from before, including the Drug War Chronicle newsletter, and our leveraging of our programs to benefit the work of other groups.
5. Further site work in the short- and medium- term pipeline should have additional major effects.

WEB SITE

As you may know from emails I've sent to the list, our web site underwent a major redesign during the summer of 2006, plus an expansion of our publishing (adding the daily content model – blogging, latest news links, daily posting of announcements and releases and so forth from other organizations) commenced in Sept. '06. The immediate result was a substantial increase in our site traffic, with a gradual increase in traffic continuing most of the time for the next several months.

Around August last year, things started "going wild," with high profile links to DRCNet beginning to appear on major web sites, and more and more often ever since. We literally have had to have our server upgraded twice in order to handle the traffic, and are now negotiating a third upgrade. The chart appearing to the right, unique hosts by month on StoptheDrugWar.org (an estimate for the number of people), illustrates the trend.

I hope you'll agree that we are in a seriously different place now than before. To provide a flavor for how (in part) this has been accomplished, we here list "big hits" that StoptheDrugWar.org has had since fall 2006 – "big hits" defined as articles getting 4,000 "reads" or more. (These numbers were last updated on Nov. 26, so there have been new "big hits," as well as increases in the totals for the articles listed, especially the most recent.) The key point is not just how many times our stories have gone "big," but how much more often it is happening now compared with a year or more ago. Here they are:

9/29/2006	Feature: Colorado Marijuana Legalization Initiative Trails, But the Fight Is On	(7,013 reads)
9/29/2006	Feature: Nevada Marijuana Initiative Organizers See Tight But Winnable Race Going Into Final Stretch	(5,155 reads)
12/15/2006	Feature: Clamor Grows for Freedom for Texas Marijuana Prisoner Tyrone Brown	(20,190 reads)
2/5/2007	Feature: The Conviction That Keeps On Hurting -- Drug Offenders and Federal Benefits	(4,570 reads)
2/16/2007	The Anti-Dobbs: Winning the War Within Through Drug Legalization	(5,781 reads)
2/23/2007	Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy," by Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen	(13,143 reads between two copies)
3/23/2007	Feature: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Free Speech Case Goes to the Supreme Court	(4,354 reads)
4/13/2007	Feature: The War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up	(15,180 reads)
4/25/2007	ONDCP Admits Exaggerating Marijuana Potency	(10,589 reads)
5/25/2007	Middle East: Opium Poppies Flower Again in Iraq	(5,356 reads)
5/25/2007	Feature: Border Blues -- Canada, US Both Bar People Who Used Drugs -- Ever	(4,046 reads)
6/1/2007	Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities	(11,959 reads)
6/8/2007	Feature: Canadian Mom Searching for Missing Daughter Denied Entry to US Over 21-Year-Old Drug Conviction	(8,754 reads)
6/25/2007	Justices Stevens, Souter, & Ginsburg: Drug Policy Reform Sympathizers?	(8,050 reads)
6/28/2007	Editorial: Two Good Reasons to Want to Legalize Drugs	(6,185 reads)
7/10/2007	Rudy Giuliani Hates Medical Marijuana, But He Loves OxyContin	(15,090 reads)
7/26/2007	Analysis: Who Voted for Medical Marijuana This Time? Breakdown by Vote, Party, and Changes from '06	(7,227 reads between two copies)
7/30/2007	San Francisco Orders Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to Sell Fatter Bags	(7,438 reads)
8/2/2007	New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer	(49,721 reads)
8/6/2007	Press Release: Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(72,302 reads)
8/6/2007	Marijuana Dealers Offer Schwarzenegger One Billion Dollars	(48,654 reads)
8/14/2007	Police Often Lack Basic Knowledge About Marijuana	(21,612 reads)
8/15/2007	Who's Planting All That Pot in the Woods?	(6,694 reads)
8/23/2007	Drug War Prisoners: 86-Year-Old Alva Mae Groves Dies Behind Bars	(6,821 reads)
8/30/2007	Drug Testing Encourages Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth Use	(20,291 reads)
9/26/2007	Why Do Police Really Oppose Marijuana Legalization?	(20,994 reads)
10/5/2007	McCain and Giuliani Say Terrible Things to a Medical Marijuana Patient	(39,636 reads)
10/10/2007	The Truth About Why Republican Candidates Oppose Medical Marijuana	(4,801 reads)
10/16/2007	Digg & Reddit Users Want to Legalize Marijuana	(16,576 reads)
10/22/2007	DEA Director Resigns, Says She Had an Awesome Time	(11,182 reads)
10/24/2007	This Man Receives 300 Marijuana Joints a Month From the Federal Government	(40,075 reads)
10/31/2007	Cowards: Democratic Front-Runners Reject Marijuana Law Reform	(6,608 reads)
11/2/2007	Feature: Can Medical Marijuana Cost You Your Kid? In California, It Can	(15,105 reads)
11/5/2007	Drug Scare: Kids in Florida are Getting High by Sniffing Feces	(7,797 reads)
11/13/2007	Marijuana Evolves Faster Than Human Beings	(27,144 reads)
11/23/2007	John McCain's Awful Response to a Cop Who Wants to End the Drug War	(34,950 reads)
11/23/2007	Feature: On the Anniversary of Kathryn Johnston's Death, Poll Finds Most Americans Oppose Use of SWAT-Style Tactics in Routine Drug Raids	(7,183 reads)

ISSUE EXPANSION

As mentioned briefly above, we have begun our first foray into the explosive issue of the overuse of SWAT teams in low-level drug enforcement, the kind of practice that led to the killing of 93-year-old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta last year. In October we commissioned a set of polling questions (our first) in a likely voter poll conducted by the Zogby firm. One of them asked if police should use aggressive entry tactics in non-emergency situations. (The text of the question, which recounted the Johnston tragedy and listed a few specific tactics, along with other info about the issue including extensive recommendations of how policy should change appears on our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids, and our Chronicle article about it appears at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/511/two_thirds_oppose_SWAT_raids_kathryn_johnston_zobgy_poll – it has continued to get traffic since the data compilation listed above, and now has almost 10,000 reads.) We got 66% of respondents on our side, including a majority of conservative and very conservative voters, politically a strong result.

There's a lot more to say about our issue expansion and our activist plans in the raids issue -- please email David Borden at [email protected] for further info.

ANTI-PROHIBITION ADVOCACY

Another question included in the aforementioned Zogby poll asked, "If hard drugs like heroin or cocaine were legalized, would you be likely to use them?" A mere 0.6% of respondents answered yes. While the poll should be thought of as more qualitative as quantitative -- people don't always predict their future behavior accurately -- the results clearly show that almost all Americans have strong reasons for not wanting to use these drugs that are not limited to the laws against them. Therefore the prohibitionists' specter of massive increases in addiction and social implosion following legalization isn't a sound assumption to make.

The web page http://stopthedrugwar.org/legalization presents this result, as well as links to our many "consequences of prohibition" news category feeds. We have also had video footage from our 2003 Latin American legalization conference formatted for the popular YouTube web site, so that people can run the videos from their own web sites. Videos available so far are linked from the same legalization main page. A major component of our strategy is the idea of promoting the voices of respected leaders who are pro-legalization, in order to use the persuasiveness of their reputations to shift public opinion. With the web site successes of the past several months, and certain technical issues being addressed by a web site designer over the next couple of months, we will also soon be launching our VIP blogger series, also fitting into this strategy. Other publishing is on the way too.

DRUG WAR CHRONICLE AND SUPPORT FOR OTHER GROUPS

One of the particularly gratifying aspects of our web site success is that at times we have been able to bring other groups along with us. By this I refer primarily to the use of YouTube video – as mentioned above, a way that different web sites can easily present the same video clips without having to host copies of the footage on their own servers. Among our "big hits" articles are blog posts running video footage from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (one of their speakers posing a tough question to John McCain that he answers in an unbelievable way), the DrugTruth Network (an interview conducted during the NORML conference with federally legal medical marijuana patient Irv Rosenfeld), and MPP's "Granite Staters" New Hampshire presidential candidates and medical marijuana campaign. YouTube's stats indicate that roughly a third of the people visiting our web pages running these videos actually click to watch the videos (though after a certain amount of time the YouTube stats start omitting older data).

The stats also indicate that our relative effectiveness for getting out the drug reform message in terms of number of people can actually be greater than the most widely visited web sites that cover lots of different issues. For example, of the 36,000+ readers we had on the aforementioned John McCain story, nearly 13,000 clicked to watch the video itself, accounting for more than half of the total views the video has gotten. An article about the encounter on the widely-read Huffington Post blog, by contrast, garnered not quite 1,400 views for the video. Our post with the Irv Rosenfeld video on DrugTruth, and our post featuring outrageous McCain and Giuliani footage responding to a medical marijuana patient with Granite Staters, both have garnered over 40,000 reads. Hence, our cooperative approach of promoting the work of other organizations has extended to the new web site format, and we are thereby in some cases getting them a lot of exposure.

Here are a few of the testimonials we've received recently for how readers put the Chronicle to use:

I read Drug War Chronicle assiduously to be up to date on the failing drug war. - Gustavo de Greiff, former attorney general of Colombia, chair of Latin American drug reform network REFORMA As LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]'s representative in Washington, DC I read without fail the weekly Drug War Chronicle and have for years. This allows me to quickly and without wasted time know what events and people are shaping policy. To date I have met with staffers from half of the 535 offices on Capitol Hill. Years of reading the Chronicle have made me informed and able to speak knowledgeably on all facets of the New Prohibition. It is an invaluable tool I use constantly. - Officer Howard J. Wooldridge (Retired) The Drug War Chronicle is the first place I send people who want to know more about what is going on in drug policy today. - Tyler Smith, Associate Director, Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative I'm an award-winning investigative journalist. I've heard about things on DRCNet that I then turned into articles for the likes of Rolling Stone and Wired magazines. - Vince Beiser Drug War Chronicle is useful for me and my staff to keep us up to date on issues around drug policy and practice. We hear from hundreds of DC prisoners caught up in this nightmare and have little time to keep current on the issues you report on. - Philip Fornaci, Director, D.C. Prisoners' Project, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights I find Drug War Chronicle very helpful in doing grassroots activism. I serve on my county's Substance Abuse Advisory Board and Substance Abuse Prevention Association and as the community co-chair for the Washington State HIV Prevention Planning Group. I have used information from Drug War Chronicle to bring others in my community to recognize the need for drug policy reform. As a member of the Substance Abuse Advisory Board I have been able to circulate materials to all members of county government. - Monte Levine I host a weekly radio program where we discuss issues related to the failed war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We use the DRCNet as a resource every week. DRCNet makes this activism work so much easier, by providing a resource that is accessible, not only as a tool for research, but as an interpreter in this political world. Occasionally, a guest will need to cancel at the last minute. This hazard is part of live radio, and our way of being prepared is to have the DRCNet information in hand, ready to share with listeners. - Sharon North, Shattered Lives Radio, KZFR, 90.1 FM, Chico, CA. Here in the Netherlands we use a lot of your paper to write our own monthly "war in drugs journal" made by the Legalize! Foundation. - Has Cornelissen, Stichting Legalize! I use stories from Drug War Chronicle to lead high school juniors and seniors in an on-going inquiry into the Drug War as a model of failed public policy. DWC enables me to track current issues, update my materials, and stay connected to the drug policy reform community so I can continue my work of developing in young people a deep and critical understanding of the world in which they are coming of age. - Jeanne Polk Barr, Chair, History Dept., Francis W. Parker School, Chicago I am editor of The Liberator Online, a libertarian email newsletter. With almost 70,000 readers, it is as far as we know the largest-circulation libertarian publication of any kind. It is published by the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit non-partisan libertarian educational organization. I use Drug War Chronicle and DRCNet as a source for information on Drug War-related issues of interest to our readers. In fact, we have a story based on a DWC item (Sen. Mike Gravel's support for drug law reform) in our current issue. I used information in an article to help form a scholarship for those convicted of a drug crime who have lost federal funding for school. Now, we are aiming to expand the scholarship to other universities and community colleges. Thanks for your help!

WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Plans in the works for StoptheDrugWar.org have the potential to achieve as much for the site's reach and impact as the work already done has achieved. Along with some needed improvements and fixes to our logon, commenting, and list subscription frameworks, we will be executing major improvements to how we promote our material to the aforementioned "Web 2.0" sites that have driven so much traffic to our site already. Right now, we are only doing a good job of promoting our material to the site Digg, and only for our blog posts. Our minor redesign will make the Digg links on our pages more prominent, will add them to our Drug War Chronicle pages and elsewhere, and will add links to promote articles to other important sites where we've had some success already, like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Netscape. This is a logical extension of a strategy that has already been very successful.

Plans are also underway to dramatically expand the background information we have available on all the different drug policy issues, using the technology available through our web site system to present it in some pretty powerful ways. (Here again, more later.)

I hope you can tell from the foregoing how excited we are about the state of DRCNet's work at this juncture, and how important we feel it is to continue to push forward at full strength. With your continued support, we will build on our successes reaching wider online audiences. We will take on the explosive issue of reckless police raids. We will expand the coalition opposing the college aid drug conviction penalty to include the similar laws in welfare and public housing. We will get the message out about the urgent need for legalization and the impressive people who support that viewpoint. We will continue to publish Drug War Chronicle to empower activists throughout the drug policy reform movement, and to educate the media, policymakers and the general public. And we will put in place new, important sections of our web site to increase the reach and impact of our educational work even further. Thank you for your support and for being part of the cause.

Sincerely,

David Borden, Executive Director

P.S. Contributions of $50 or more can be credited toward our first (not-yet-selected) book premiums of 2008. (You'll need to remind us after we send out the upcoming premium announcements.) Remember that tax-deductible donations should be made payable to DRCNet Foundation. (The amount that is deductible will be reduced by the retail price of any gift(s) you select.) Non-deductible donations for our lobbying work should be made payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network.

P.P.S. In case you would like to donate at this time, I am providing the information here for your convenience: DRCNet Foundation (for tax-deductible donations supporting our educational work) or Drug Reform Coordination Network (for non-deductible donations supporting our lobbying work), P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, or http://stopthedrugwar.org/donate online. (Contact us if you'd like information on donating stock.)

P.P.P.S. Please feel free to call us at (202) 293-8340 if you'd like to discuss any of our programs or have other questions or concerns.

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Weekly: Blogging @ the Speakeasy

Along with our weekly in-depth Chronicle reporting, DRCNet has since late summer also been providing daily content in the way of blogging in the Stop the Drug War Speakeasy -- huge numbers of people have been reading it recently -- as well as Latest News links (upper right-hand corner of most web pages), event listings (lower right-hand corner) and other info. Check out DRCNet every day to stay on top of the drug reform game!

Since last issue:

Scott Morgan brings us: "It's Really Easy to Put Innocent People in Jail for Drugs," "Idiot Steals Two Crocodiles and a Monkey, Blames Marijuana," "The Drug Czar's Awesome Plan to Blame Hugo Chavez for Everything," "Our Drug Laws Literally Allow Police to Steal From Innocent People," and "Obama Pledges to Continue the Drug War."

David Borden offers: "Randomly Sad But True."

David Guard posts numerous press releases, action alerts and other organizational announcements in the In the Trenches blog.

Please join us in the Reader Blogs too.

Thanks for reading, and writing...

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Students: Intern at DRCNet and Help Stop the Drug War!

Want to help end the "war on drugs," while earning college credit too? Apply for a DRCNet internship for this fall semester (or spring) and you could come join the team and help us fight the fight!

DRCNet (also known as "Stop the Drug War") has a strong record of providing substantive work experience to our interns -- you won't spend the summer doing filing or running errands, you will play an integral role in one or more of our exciting programs. Options for work you can do with us include coalition outreach as part of the campaign to repeal the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, and to expand that effort to encompass other bad drug laws like the similar provisions in welfare and public housing law; blogosphere/web outreach; media research and outreach; web site work (research, writing, technical); possibly other areas. If you are chosen for an internship, we will strive to match your interests and abilities to whichever area is the best fit for you.

While our internships are unpaid, we will reimburse you for metro fare, and DRCNet is a fun and rewarding place to work. To apply, please send your resume to David Guard at [email protected], and feel free to contact us at (202) 293-8340. We hope to hear from you! Check out our web site at http://stopthedrugwar.org to learn more about our organization.

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Law Enforcement: Virginia Narcotics Officer Killed Busting Down Door in Marijuana Grow Raid

Chesapeake, Virginia, Police Detective Jarrod Shivers was killed by a bullet fired through a door as he attempted to break it down during a raid on a suspected marijuana grow operation on January 17. Shivers was a veteran narcotic detective and SWAT team member whose specialty was "breaching" doors during drug raids. The home's resident, Ryan Frederick, was arrested in the shooting.

As Drug War Chronicle noted in a recent review of drug war-related law enforcement deaths last year, making drug arrests is not an extraordinarily risky endeavor -- only one officer died doing a drug raid last year, and the total number killed doing any drug enforcement was five. But there are risks, especially when police rely on dynamic forced entries, as appears to have been the case in Chesapeake.

While police said they did a "knock and announce" before entering the home, one local press account said Shivers "died doing his specialty -- breaking down doors" -- when he was shot.

Police had obtained a search warrant based on information from a confidential informant that "the marijuana was growing in portable shelters with a hydroponic system," according to local press reports. This week, police announced they had indeed seized marijuana and growing equipment, though without explaining why they waited five days to say so.

Shivers was buried on Tuesday. The alleged shooter, Frederick, remains in jail. He is now charged with first degree murder.

All this over some pot plants.

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Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Scandal broadens in Brooklyn South, a cop working for a federal drug task force goes bad in California, and a pair of private prison guards in Texas get in trouble. Let's get to it:

In New York City, the Brooklyn South Narcotics scandal continues to grow. On Monday night, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly transferred the commanding officer of citywide narcotics, Deputy Chief James O'Neill; the head of Brooklyn South Narcotics, Inspector James O'Connell; and two Brooklyn South Narcotics captains, John Maldari and Joseph Terranova. That move came after word leaked out that 15 Brooklyn South Narcotics detectives have been put on desk duty as the NYPD Bureau of Internal Affairs investigates charges they took sex, drugs and cash from drug users and dealers. Four others have been arrested on charges they stole drugs to pay off informants. The latest trouble in the scandal-plagued precinct began to unravel when Detective Sean Johnstone, 34, forgot he was wearing a wire as he bragged to his partner about seizing 28 bags of cocaine, but only turning in 17. He and another officer, Julio Alvarez, 30, were arrested December 20. Those arrests led to the arrests last week of Sgt. Michael Arenella, 31, and Officer Jerry Bowens, 41, of the same squad. All are accused of stealing cash from drug dealers, and at least one is accused of having sex with an informant.

In Huntington Park, California, a police officer working in a federal drug task force was arrested January 17 for cultivating informants to help him identify and rob drug dealers and sell their wares. Huntington Park Police Sgt. Alvaro Murillo, 44, even tried to rob an undercover DEA agent posing as a dealer, the federal indictment alleges. Murillo and one of his informants face one count each of conspiracy to possess cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute.

In Liberty, Texas, two jail guards were arrested Tuesday after agreeing to smuggle drugs in to a federal prisoner. Guards Shondlyn Jones, 25, and Manitra Taylor, 42, accepted drugs and cash from an undercover agent. They now face charges of conspiring to delivery marijuana and ecstasy. The pair were employed by CiviGenics, Inc., a private prison firm that operates the Liberty County jail.

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Law Enforcement: Snitch Culture Gone Bad in Ohio -- 15 Prisoners to Go Free Because of Informant's Tainted Testimony

In a case that has been stinking up northeast Ohio for several years now, a federal judge in Cleveland Tuesday decided that 15 Mansfield men imprisoned on drug charges should be freed because their convictions were based on the testimony of a lying DEA informant. The men, convicted on crack cocaine dealing charges, have collectively served 30 years already.

The men were all convicted solely on the testimony of informant Jerrell Bray and his handler, DEA Special Agent Lee Lucas. But Bray has since admitted lying in the Mansfield drug cases and has since been sentenced to 15 years in prison on perjury and civil rights charges. He is now working with a US Justice Department task force investigating what went wrong in the cases.

"It's about time," said Danielle Young, the mother of Nolan Lovett, who was serving a five-year sentence but could be home by the end of the month. "This is long, long overdue. These boys will finally get justice, even if it is late," she told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

US District Judge John Adams told attorneys Tuesday he hopes to have the men returned to Northeast Ohio from federal prisons across the county. Then, federal prosecutors can formally ask Adams to drop the charges because there is no evidence to convict the men. That could have happened as early as this week.

Bray and Lucas originally collaborated on a massive drug investigation that resulted in 26 indictments for drug conspiracy. Three people were sentenced to probation, judges or juries tossed eight cases, and 15 men were sent to prison. But that was before Bray's lies were exposed.

The Plain Dealer noted that 14 of the 15 had pleaded guilty, a fact the paper naively said made the situation "unique," but then pointed out that they may have pleaded after seeing what had happened to Geneva France, a young mother with no criminal record who was indicted, but refused to plea bargain and steadfastly maintained her innocence. Convicted on the testimony of Bray and Lucas, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

France served 16 months before being freed after Bray's perjury came to light. In a heart-rending article this week, the Plain Dealer recounted France's sorry tale. Her real offense? Refusing to date the informant.

While the victims of Bray and Lucas are about to be freed, the case isn't over yet, and now, the hunter has become the hunted. According to the Plain Dealer, Lucas is the focus of the Justice Department investigation. But it is the snitch system itself that should really be on trial.

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Medical Marijuana: Employers Can Fire Users, California Supreme Court Rules

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that employers may fire workers who use medical marijuana in compliance with California's Compassionate Use Act -- even if they are off duty and even if their use does not affect their job performance. The ruling came in Ross v. Raging Wire Telecommunications.

In that case, Gary Ross, whose doctor recommended medical marijuana for chronic back pain resulting from an injury incurred while serving in the Air Force, was hired by Raging Wire as a systems engineer in 2001 and was required to take a drug test as a condition of employment. He provided the company with a copy of his doctor's recommendation, but the company fired him a week later because of a positive test result.

Ross sued, alleging that the company violated the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) by not accommodating his disability. He also argued that the company fired him in violation of public policy because the Compassionate Use Act legalized medical marijuana in the state.

"All I am asking is to be a productive member of society," Ross said in a written statement. "I was not fired for poor work performance but for an antiquated policy on medical marijuana."

His case was watched with great interest by California medical marijuana users. Hundreds have complained of being fired, threatened with firing, or not being hired as a result of their medical marijuana use.

But in siding with employers, the state high court said the Compassionate Use Act protected users only from criminal prosecution. "Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees," wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdeger for the majority. "Under California law, an employer may require pre-employment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions."

Additionally, Werdeger noted, even though medical marijuana is legal under state law it remains illegal under federal law, and "the FEHA does not require employers to accommodate the use of illegal drugs."

Justice Joyce Kennard was scathing in her dissent. The decision was "conspicuously lacking in compassion," she wrote. "The majority's holding disrespects the will of California's voters." The voters "surely never intended that persons who availed themselves" of the medical marijuana act "would thereby disqualify themselves from employment," Kennard said.

Reaction was rapid and only beginning on Thursday evening. The Los Angeles Times reported that Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) announced the same day he would introduce legislation to prevent employers from discriminating against medical marijuana users. "The people of California did not intend that patients be unemployed in order to use medical marijuana," he said.

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) told the Times the decision was a slap at patients. "The court is claiming tha California voters intended to permit medical use of marijuana, but only if you're willing to be unemployed and on welfare," Mirken said. "That is ridiculous on its face, as well as cruel."

The ability of medical marijuana users to function in society is not just an issue in California. Legislative efforts are afoot in Oregon to explicitly allow employers to fire medical marijuana users. In Montana, the Department of Corrections wants to ban probationers and parolees from using medical marijuana. In some other states, like Rhode Island, protections for users are written into the law. Look for a feature article on this issue next week in the Chronicle.

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Medical Marijuana: New Mexico Paraplegic Sues Over Seizure of Plants, Grow Equipment

One of New Mexico's first registered medical marijuana patients is suing Eddy County Sheriff's deputies for seizing his marijuana plants and grow equipment and turning them over to the DEA. Leonard French of Malaga received a license to grow and use marijuana for pain resulting from a spinal cord injury, but that didn't stop the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force, headed by Dave Edmundson of the Eddy County Sheriff's Department, from seizing his plants and equipment shortly after he began growing last summer.

Now, with the help of the ACLU of New Mexico, French has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking a declaratory judgment that the task force's actions violated the state's medical marijuana law, the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act, as well as its asset forfeiture statute; an injunction to stop the task force from again raiding French and his garden; and compensatory damages for his stolen property.

"The New Mexico state legislature, in its wisdom, passed the Compassionate Use Act after carefully considering the benefits the drug provides for people who suffer from uncontrollable pain, and weighing those benefits against the way federal law considers cannabis," said Peter Simonson, ACLU executive director, in a press release announcing the lawsuit. "With their actions against Mr. French, Eddy County officials thwarted that humane, sensible law, probably for no other reason than that they believed federal law empowered them to do so."

When at least four Eddy County deputies acting as members of the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force showed up at French's home last September 4, he thought they were checking his compliance with the medical marijuana law, so he presented them with his license, and showed them his grow, which consisted of two small plants and three dead sprouts. They then turned the plants and the grow equipment over to the DEA, which does not recognize medical marijuana or the state laws that permit its use. French has not been charged with any offense under either state or federal law.

"With the Compassionate Use Act, New Mexico embarked on an innovative project to help people who suffer from painful conditions like Mr. French's," said Simonson. "The law cannot succeed if the threat of arrest by county and local law enforcement hangs over participants in the program. With this lawsuit, we hope to clear the way for the State to implement a sensible, conservative program to apply a drug that traditionally has been considered illicit for constructive purposes."

And maybe teach some recalcitrant cops a lesson about obeying the law.

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Drug Penalties: New York Governor Proposes Tax Stamps -- $200 a Gram for Cocaine

As part of a massive just unveiled state budget, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) is proposing to require anyone who buys, sells, transports, or possesses "all marijuana and controlled substances" to have a "tax stamp" for the illegal substance. Spitzer's provision proposes a $3.50 per gram tax on marijuana, but a whopping $200 per gram tax for cocaine.

Iowa drug tax assessment, submitted anonymously by a Chronicle reader -- click to enlarge in separate window

Under the proposal, the tax would be paid in advance of purchase by the "dealer," who would buy stamps from the state Department of Taxation and Finance, which he must then affix to the packages of drugs to show the tax has been paid. In the foreseeable event that dealers do not rush down to the tax office to pay up, the bill requires state police agencies and prosecutors to report any dealers who haven't paid their drug taxes to the department, unless reporting them would jeopardize a pending criminal investigation.

The governor's office said the tax would generate $13 million in the 2008-09 fiscal year, and $17 million a year after that. The revenues would be deposited in the state general fund. To be enacted, the move must be approved by the legislature.

In a Wednesday press release, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said he had his doubts about the bill. While Spitzer's proposal might be superficially appealing, New Yorkers would be better off taxing and regulating marijuana, he said.

While the idea of taxation is reasonable, he continued, "these tax stamp bills and laws smack of the gratuitous piling on of punitive sanctions that permeates the overall drug war." In addition to arrest and imprisonment, drug violators already face all sorts collateral consequences, and imposing the drug tax as yet another burden would "end up causing more harm than good," he said. Nadelman went on to point out that Spitzer could save far more money for New York taxpayers by following through on his campaign commitments regarding reform of the Rockefeller drug laws.

And he took the opportunity to push for fundamental reform of the marijuana laws. "[Q]uite frankly, New Yorkers would most benefit from a serious proposal to tax, control and regulate marijuana more or less like alcohol is today," he said. "Even though New York decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s, it still arrests people for that offense more frequently than most states that never decriminalized it. New Yorkers spend many tens of millions of dollars per year for this foolish excess, when instead the state could earn even greater amounts from taxing this ever popular consumer product. Overall consumption would likely rise only modestly given the widespread and easy availability of marijuana today notwithstanding its illegality. Virtually all New Yorkers -- both those who like marijuana and those who have no interest in it -- would benefit."

Bizarrely, Sen. Martin Golden, a former NYC police officer and a Republican from Brooklyn, criticized the drug tax from the opposite direction. Golden told the New York Post, "another pie-in-the-sky idea that really has no legitimacy, and hopefully is not a first step toward legalizing drugs."

Verenda Smith, government affairs associate at the Federation of Tax Administrators, told the New York Times that states need to create an at least theoretical opportunity for drug sellers to pay the tax legally, such as anonymous purchase, for it to be constitutional.

According to the Spitzer administration, 29 states have already passed laws imposing drug taxes. But several of those laws have been challenged, most recently in Tennessee, where a state appeals court ruled last September that the state's drug tax law was unconstitutional because the state cannot tax something it declares illegal.

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Marijuana: New Hampshire Decriminalization Bill Wins Support at Hearing

A bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to 1.25 ounces of marijuana won broad support at a New Hampshire House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee hearing Tuesday. Only representatives of the state attorney general's office and the New Hampshire Chiefs of Police spoke against the measure, while both a police officer and a corrections official were among those speaking in favor of it.

The bill, HB 1623, would make possession of less than 1.25 ounces a violation, punishable by a maximum $200 fine. Simple possession is currently a Class A misdemeanor. The bill would also eliminate "penalties for the manufacture or sale of less than 1.25 ounces of marijuana." It was sponsored by Reps. Jeffrey Fontas (D-Nashua), Andrew Edwards (D-Nashua), and the ironically named Charles Weed (D-Keene).

Decriminalization offers a more sensible way of handling small-time marijuana offenses, New Hampshire police officer Bradley Jardis told the committee. "I have been kicked, I have been punched, I have been choked, I have been dropped to the ground, I've had two people jump on top of me punching me while I was on duty -- by people who had been drinking alcohol," he said. "I have never been to a domestic violence call or a fight call where someone smokes marijuana."

The bill also gained support from Richard Van Wickler, superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections, who told the committee decriminalization has worked in other places. "Jurisdictions globally and nationally that have passed laws such as the one that's before you today have had success with it," he said. "It has served the purpose of justice; it has moved closer to crime policies based on fact rather than fiction."

Speaking in opposition to the bill, Berlin Police Chief Peter Morency, head of the police chiefs' association, was asked by Rep. Timothy Robertson (D-Keene) if he would also be in favor of reinstating Alcohol Prohibition. After a pause, Morency said it was something he would consider.

That sparked a reaction from the New Hampshire Coalition for Commonsense Marijuana Policy, which issued a press release the same day as the hearing criticizing Morency's views. "Alcohol Prohibition is widely considered an enormous disaster that increased crime and violence," said the group's Matt Simon. "We all want safer communities, but Chief Morency's ideas for how to achieve that are as misguided regarding alcohol as they are regarding marijuana."

According to Rep. Fontas, HB1623 is more about preserving the opportunities of young people rather than anything to do with marijuana. He told the Laconia Citizen a marijuana possession conviction could bar young people from receiving federal financial aid for college or see them excluded from certain jobs. "If we are concerned enough about young people going down the wrong track then we should not prevent them from opportunities that get them on the right one," said Fontas.

The hearing concluded with the committee deciding to form a four-member subcommittee to study the bill further and come back with a recommendation before taking the bill to a full committee vote. If it passes that hurdle, it's on to a full vote in the House, and then off to the Senate.

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Marijuana: Burlington, Vermont City Council Rejects Decriminalization Measure

The Burlington, Vermont, City Council Tuesday narrowly defeated a watered-down ballot question on marijuana decriminalization. The measure would have asked the governor and state legislature "to explore an alternative to the criminal system for dealing with small quantities of marijuana." It failed 7-6.

If the measure had passed, it would have gone before voters at the next annual Town Meeting.

The council did pass an even more watered-down resolution. It voted 11-2 to assign the council's Public Safety Committee the task of exploring "creating another option of handling small quantities of marijuana."

Councilman Ed Adrian, who introduced the original decriminalization measure and who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said the committee will listen to "perspectives from all sides" in the marijuana debate. "I was disappointed that it wasn't put on the ballot so the people could weigh in on this, but that's the way the democratic process works," he said in remarks reported by the Burlington Free Press.

The decrim move in Burlington comes in the context of an emerging debate over drug policy in Vermont. The legislature this session will contend with decriminalization and industrial hemp, as well as bills seeking to crack down on hard drug trafficking, and the level of debate has been rising.

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Harm Reduction: San Antonio Police Arrest Needle Exchangers, DA Ups the Ante

Bill Day, 73, and the Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition have been doing unsanctioned needle exchanges in poor San Antonio neighborhoods for years, but this week, Day and two of the group's board members were arrested on drug paraphernalia possession charges as they handed out clean syringes. Now, the San Antonio Express-News reports, to add insult to injury, District Attorney Susan Reed has upped the charges from possession to distribution of paraphernalia, exposing Day and his comrades to a year in jail, as opposed to the maximum $500 fine for possession.

Day and the coalition are fighting back. They have assembled a legal team that includes high-profile criminal defense attorney Gerald Goldstein and pro bono assistance from the prestigious Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld law firm.

"These are enormously decent, charitable people, and what's happening with them smacks of persecution," said Neel Lane, an attorney with Akin Gump who has filed a brief with the state attorney general's office on the group's behalf.

Last year, the Texas legislature passed a bill authorizing health officials to set up a pilot needle exchange program in Bexar County, which would be the first legal needle exchange in the Lone Star State. But DA Reed has stalled the program, declaring that the legislation authorizing it is faulty. An opinion from the state attorney general is pending.

In fact, Reed has been trying to derail the program since it was approved last summer. Last August, she told the Express-News that state drug laws trump the needle exchange legislation, a minority position even among prosecutors. She warned local health officials the law would not protect them.

"I'm telling them, and I'm telling the police chief, I don't think they have any kind of criminal immunity," Reed said. "That's the bottom line. It has nothing to do with whether they do it or don't do it -- other than if you do it you might find yourself in jail."

Reed opposed the needle exchange program, but by forcing the issue, she may have inadvertently contributed to resolving the program's legality once and for all.

A special thanks to Texas criminal justice blogger Scott Henson and his Grits for Breakfast blog for a heads-up on this one.

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Latin America: Mexican Soldiers Raid Police in Drug Fight in Rio Grande Valley Border Cities

Elite Mexican army troops relieved municipal police forces of duty in border towns in Tamaulipas state Tuesday as part of President Felipe Calderón's bid to break the power of Mexican drug trafficking organizations. From Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, all the way down to Matamoros, near where the river drains into the Gulf of Mexico, the Mexican military was on the move.

In Nuevo Laredo, soldiers surrounded police headquarters at 8:00am, ordering officers to remain inside while they disarmed them and searched for evidence linking them to drug traffickers. Members of the army's elite Airborne Special Forces Group set up checkpoints throughout the city.

Similar takeovers were reported in Reynosa and Matamoros, where the Los Angeles Times, citing local media, reported 600 police officers were confined to their stations and being questioned by federal authorities.

The Dallas Times reported that Mexican soldiers were also pouring into Ciudad Juárez, setting up checkpoints, and searching homes for weapons. Some soldiers were reported stationed outside a hospital where a top state law enforcement official was recovering from an assassination attempt by presumed drug cartel hit men. Authorities in Juárez had last week asked Calderón for help after 29 people were killed there so far this year.

The military takeovers are not a new tactic for Calderón; he did the same thing last year in Tijuana, sending more than 3,000 soldiers and federal police into the border city to vet local police. That operation lasted three weeks; since then, drug prohibition-related violence has continued unabated. At least 17 people were killed there last week, including three senior police officials, one of whom was shot in his home alongside his wife and two daughters.

It has been similarly hot along the Rio Grande, where the troops are now on patrol. Just two weeks ago, we reported on gun battles between traffickers and soldiers in Rio Bravo, between Matamoros and Reynosa, and a subsequent attack on soldiers on patrol in Reynosa.

President Calderón is aggressively waging the war on drugs, or more specifically, on his country's powerful, violent, and competing drug trafficking organizations. More than 20,000 are taking part in anti-drug efforts, and the arrests and the seizures continue. But so does the killing, and so does the drug traffic.

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Latin America: US Accuses Venezuela of "Colluding" with Cocaine Trade

Drug control policy was the arena where the often acrimonious relations between the US and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez played out this week, with Washington accusing Venezuela of colluding with cocaine traffickers, and Caracas vehemently denying that was the case. Chávez, meanwhile, this week added to the mix by announcing that he chewed coca every day.

The controversy got rolling Sunday in Bogota, when, after finishing a meeting with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, American drug czar John Walters came out swinging at Venezuela. Chávez, he said, had failed to get rid of corrupt officials or deny traffickers the use of Venezuelan territory.

"It goes beyond 'I can't do it' to 'I won't do it'. And 'I won't do it' means that 'I am colluding,'" Walters said in remarks reported by the BBC. "I think it is about time to face up to the fact that President Chávez is becoming a major facilitator of the transit of cocaine to Europe and other parts of this hemisphere."

Just to make sure his point was getting across, Walters repeated it in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Where are the big seizures, where are the big arrests of individuals who are at least logistical coordinators? When it's being launched from controlled airports and seaports, where are the arrests of corrupt officials? At some point here, this is tantamount to collusion," Walters said.

The charge comes after the US government last fall named Venezuela as one of two governments world-wide that had failed to live up to US drug policy objectives and more than two years after Chávez ordered a halt to all cooperation with the DEA in Venezuela, charging that the agency was violating Venezuelan sovereignty.

Venezuela was quick to respond to Walters. At a Caracas press conference Tuesday, Néstor Reverol, head of the National Anti-Drug Office, said that Venezuela had been very busy fighting the cocaine trade, having seized more than 50 tons of drugs last year, busted 11 cocaine labs, identified 186 airstrips, and arrested more than 4,000 people.

Reverol said Washington should "stop using the fight against drugs as a political weapon" and added that his government would sue the US a the Organization of American States (OAS) over its "belligerence" and "baseless charges" about Venezuela's drug-fighting efforts.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan Ambassador to the OAS Jorge Valero followed-up with a speech to the OAS Permanent Council charging that US drug policy is "immoral and interventionist."

The DEA, he said, had monitored drug runs inside Venezuela without notifying Venezuelan authorities, a violation of national sovereignty. "The DEA encourages the interference of the US government in other countries' domestic affairs by hiding behind the excuse of anti-drug cooperation," Valero charged. "Venezuela is not going back to be a colony of any empire. Venezuela is a free sovereign country and claims the right to develop its own anti-drug policies. It should be known that Venezuela is doing it successfully."

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald breathlessly reported Sunday that Chávez had said in a recent speech that he used coca every day and that Bolivian President Evo Morales sent it to him. ''I chew coca every day in the morning... and look how I am,'' he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience. Just as Fidel Castro ''sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,'' Bolivian President Morales "sends me coca paste... I recommend it to you."

While Chávez said "coca paste," which is typically smoked, it seems clear that he was referring to coca leaf, which is chewed.

The Herald and several experts it consulted worried that Chávez had admitted committing an illegal act and even violating the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which bans coca. One expert even worried that Chávez had named Morales as a "narco trafficker." But neither Chávez nor Morales seem as worried as the Herald and its experts.

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Weekly: This Week in History

January 31, 1945: A New York Times article reports an increase in marijuana trafficking and mentions that an official at the Treasury Department says that traffic in some instances reaches "the proportion of well-financed national and international conspirators." One of the New York gangs which came under investigation was the "107th Street Mob," formerly headed by the notorious mobster "Lucky" Luciano.

January 28, 1972: The Nixon Administration creates the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) to establish joint federal/local task forces to fight the drug trade at the street level. Myles Ambrose is appointed director.

January 28, 1982: President Ronald Reagan creates a cabinet-level task force, the Vice-President's Task Force on South Florida. Headed by George Bush, it combines agents from DEA, Customs, ATF, IRS, Army, and Navy to mobilize against drug traffickers.

January 25, 1990: President George Bush proposes to add an additional $1.2 billion to the budget for the war on drugs, including a 50% increase in military spending.

January 25, 1993: Based on a tip that drugs were on the premises, police smash down the door and rush into the home of Manuel Ramirez, a retired golf course groundskeeper living in Stockton, California. Ramirez awakes, grabs a pistol and shoots and kills one policeman before other officers kill him. No drugs are found.

January 25, 1994: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act extends ONDCP's mission to assessing budgets and resources related to the National Drug Control Strategy. It also establishes specific reporting requirements in the areas of drug use, availability, consequences, and treatment.

January 25, 1995: The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the District of Columbia by Robert Kampia and Chuck Thomas. MPP's mission is to provide the marijuana law-reform movement with full-time, organized lobbying on the federal level.

January 27, 1995: The international hashish seizure record is set -- 290,400 pounds -- in Khyber Agency, Pakistan.

January 30, 1997: New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr. Jerome Kassirer opines in favor of doctors being allowed to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes, calling the threat of government sanctions "misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane."

January 29, 1998: Judge Nancy Gertner, a district judge in Boston, criticizes the drug war for spending too much federal funds while depriving Americans of liberty at a forum organized by the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers.

January 26, 2000: Rockefeller drug law prisoner Elaine Bartlett, subject of the book "Life on the Outside: the Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett," is set free after sixteen years in Bedford Hill prison for a first time, low-level, cocaine selling offense.

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Again, please help us keep Drug War Chronicle alive at this important time! Click here to make a donation online, or send your check or money order to: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036. Make your check payable to DRCNet Foundation to make a tax-deductible donation for Drug War Chronicle -- remember if you select one of our member premium gifts that will reduce the portion of your donation that is tax-deductible -- or make a non-deductible donation for our lobbying work -- online or check payable to Drug Reform Coordination Network, same address. We can also accept contributions of stock -- email [email protected] for the necessary info.

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Internship Opportunity: Americans for Safe Access, Washington, DC

Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists, and concerned citizens working to ensure safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. The organization is currently seeking graduate and undergraduate interns in their Washington DC office. Qualified candidates will work closely with ASA's Government Affairs department to research policy issues, facilitate grassroots outreach and assist with administrative work.

Intern responsibilities will vary but in general include administrative support to the Government Affairs staff; researching and reviewing medical cannabis policy topics; and drafting correspondence, fact sheets, memos, and other advocacy materials for federal policy makers. Interns will also be responsible for attending hearings and briefings and accompanying ASA staff at various meetings when appropriate.

Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate a willingness to undertake unfamiliar initiatives with enthusiasm and creativity, and possess some knowledge about the issues facing medical cannabis patients and their providers nationwide. Applicants should possess a sense of humor, excellent research, communication and organizational skills, have the ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously while working independently or as a team, and have some basic understanding of the federal legislative process. Some prior campaign experience preferred but not necessary.

The internship is an unpaid experience, but ASA staff will work to ensure academic credit is received, if applicable. Interns are expected to work in ASA's Washington, DC office between 15-30 hours per week. The minimum duration of an internship is 8 weeks.

To apply, please fax or e-mail a cover letter, resume, and short writing sample (no more than 5 pages) to ASA at (510) 251-2036 or [email protected].

No phone calls, please -- all applicants will be notified of receipt of their applications; only selected applicants will be contacted for phone or in-person interviews.

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Errata

In our article on Virginia's anti-salvia divinorum bill last week, we forgot to cite our source article, from Virginia Commonwealth University's Commonwealth Times and the VCU Capital News Service. VCU's Alexander Harris, an undergraduate, was the only reporter in the state that we are aware of to cover this troubling development in the legislature.

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Webmasters: Help the Movement by Running DRCNet Syndication Feeds on Your Web Site!

Are you a fan of DRCNet, and do you have a web site you'd like to use to spread the word more forcefully than a single link to our site can achieve? We are pleased to announce that DRCNet content syndication feeds are now available. Whether your readers' interest is in-depth reporting as in Drug War Chronicle, the ongoing commentary in our blogs, or info on specific drug war subtopics, we are now able to provide customizable code for you to paste into appropriate spots on your blog or web site to run automatically updating links to DRCNet educational content.

For example, if you're a big fan of Drug War Chronicle and you think your readers would benefit from it, you can have the latest issue's headlines, or a portion of them, automatically show up and refresh when each new issue comes out.

If your site is devoted to marijuana policy, you can run our topical archive, featuring links to every item we post to our site about marijuana -- Chronicle articles, blog posts, event listings, outside news links, more. The same for harm reduction, asset forfeiture, drug trade violence, needle exchange programs, Canada, ballot initiatives, roughly a hundred different topics we are now tracking on an ongoing basis. (Visit the Chronicle main page, right-hand column, to see the complete current list.)

If you're especially into our new Speakeasy blog section, new content coming out every day dealing with all the issues, you can run links to those posts or to subsections of the Speakeasy.

Click here to view a sample of what is available -- please note that the length, the look and other details of how it will appear on your site can be customized to match your needs and preferences.

Please also note that we will be happy to make additional permutations of our content available to you upon request (though we cannot promise immediate fulfillment of such requests as the timing will in many cases depend on the availability of our web site designer). Visit our Site Map page to see what is currently available -- any RSS feed made available there is also available as a javascript feed for your web site (along with the Chronicle feed which is not showing up yet but which you can find on the feeds page linked above). Feel free to try out our automatic feed generator, online here.

Contact us for assistance or to let us know what you are running and where. And thank you in advance for your support.

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Resource: DRCNet Web Site Offers Wide Array of RSS Feeds for Your Reader

RSS feeds are the wave of the future -- and DRCNet now offers them! The latest Drug War Chronicle issue is now available using RSS at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/feed online.

We have many other RSS feeds available as well, following about a hundred different drug policy subtopics that we began tracking since the relaunch of our web site this summer -- indexing not only Drug War Chronicle articles but also Speakeasy blog posts, event listings, outside news links and more -- and for our daily blog postings and the different subtracks of them. Visit our Site Map page to peruse the full set.

Thank you for tuning in to DRCNet and drug policy reform!

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Resource: Reformer's Calendar Accessible Through DRCNet Web Site

DRCNet's Reformer's Calendar is a tool you can use to let the world know about your events, and find out what is going on in your area in the issue. This resource used to run in our newsletter each week, but now is available from the right hand column of most of the pages on our web site.

• Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org each day and you'll see a listing of upcoming events in the page's right-hand column with the number of days remaining until the next several events coming up and a link to more.

• Check our new online calendar section at to view all of them by month, week or a range of different views.
• We request and invite you to submit your event listings directly on our web site. Note that our new system allows you to post not only a short description as we currently do, but also the entire text of your announcement.

The Reformer's Calendar publishes events large and small of interest to drug policy reformers around the world. Whether it's a major international conference, a demonstration bringing together people from around the region or a forum at the local college, we want to know so we can let others know, too.

But we need your help to keep the calendar current, so please make sure to contact us and don't assume that we already know about the event or that we'll hear about it from someone else, because that doesn't always happen.

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