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DeKalb County Georgia, which borders Atlanta, endured 12 fatal police shootings last year. Now their new Police Chief Terrell Bolton is promising to do something. From Daily Report:

Bolton, who was hired last month, said his department has nothing to hide, and that the new initiative is meant to encourage transparency and make citizens feel more comfortable.

GBI and DEA agents will respond to police-involved shootings as they happen, working as monitors and reporting inappropriate behavior to DeKalb superior officers.

It's exciting to see police getting serious about not shooting citizens. The initiative includes improved training procedures, but there's a clear emphasis on standardizing the response when a shooting occurs. No doubt, this is a reaction to the Kathryn Johnston fiasco in nearby Atlanta, where officers attempted a cover-up after shooting an innocent suspect.

Radley Balko's research demonstrates the importance of adequately investigating police shootings, which so rarely result in criminal charges even when obvious injustices occur. I'm not sure the DEA are the right people to investigate this, but anything that distracts them from their other duties is a big win for public safety in itself.

Still, there's only so much that training and accountability can do to prevent drug war violence. So long as police conduct no-knock raids on the homes of non-violent suspects, warrants are issued based on the testimony of criminal informants in exchange for compensation, police enter the wrong homes with alarming frequency, and innocent people reach for weapons when their doors are kicked in unexpectedly, the killings will continue.

If these public officials are serious about preventing unnecessary police shootings, it's time to discuss the unnecessary war that demands them.

When the European drug policy and defense think-tank the Senlis Council in late 2005 unveiled its proposal to deal with illicit Afghan opium by licensing growers and diverting production to the global legal medicinal market for opioid pain medications, just about nobody thought the idea had a chance of going anywhere. Since then, as opium production there has continued to increase—Afghanistan now accounts for 90% of the global illicit opium supply—and Taliban insurgents have gathered strength, the licensing scheme has picked up support from politicians in Canada, England, and Italy, but still remains a long-shot. This week, as I will report in the Chronicle on Friday, the licensing notion gained new support, as the British Medical Association is suggesting that Afghan opium be used to produce medicinal diamorphine (heroin) for use in the National Health Service. The licensing idea also made it to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post last week, when columnist Anne Applebaum wrote a piece, "Ending an Opium War; Poppies and Afghan Recovery Can Both Bloom, arguing that the US should do in Afghanistan now what it did so successfully in Turkey under President Nixon. Then, faced with an influx of Turkish heroin (the stuff of the infamous French Connection), the US worked with the Turkish government and farmers to regulate poppy production. Now, Turkey is the main supplier of medicinal narcotics to the US. The current US administration, however, is adamantly opposed to any such effort in Afghanistan. Instead, drug war extremists in Washington are pushing the Afghans to make stronger efforts to eradicate the poppy crop and are even trying to push herbicidal eradication down the throat of the Karzai government. That idea has little support in Afghanistan or even among our NATO allies. Both groups fear a sustained attack on the country's economic mainstay will lead to political upheaval and end up benefiting the Taliban, a not unreasonable worry. But it seems like the Bush administration is starting to worry that the licensing scheme is gaining too much ground. Or, at least, it has bestirred itself to attack the notion. In a letter from James O'Gara, the drug czars deputy for supply reduction in today's Washington Post, the administration tried to fight back:

The Wrong Plan for Afghanistan's Opium Anne Applebaum's proposal to foster legal Afghan opium ["Ending an Opium War; Poppies and Afghan Recovery Can Both Bloom," op-ed, Jan. 16] is based on a misdiagnosis of the problem. First, there is no licit demand for Afghanistan's enormous supply of opium, currently more than 90 percent of the world's illicit market and almost double the world's entire licit production requirement. The United Nations reports a current global oversupply of opium-based products from existing licit producers. Pouring vastly more legal opium into the world system would cause prices to plummet, making the illicit trade that much more attractive to farmers. Second, Afghanistan produces opium because some regions remain under attack and lack security, to say nothing of the controls that are a prerequisite for any legal trade in narcotics. In the absence of such institutional controls, the distinction between legal and illicit opium is meaningless. Afghanistan needs peace, a flourishing economy and the rule of law. Each of these conditions is undone by narcotics production. Nowhere in the world do narco-warlords willingly relinquish their stranglehold on poor opium farmers, and nowhere in the world do such farmers become rich. The opium trade must be broken, not fostered, before it undoes the rest of Afghanistan.

O'Gara first claims there is no global need for more opioid pain relievers, citing the International Narcotics Control Board. That claim is debatable. In its proposal, the Senlis Council begged to differ, citing serious undersupplies, especially in the underdeveloped world. Second, O'Gara suggests that opium is being grown in Afghanistan only because of a lack of security and an effective national state. But the US government's insistence on attacking the poppy crop is precisely what contributes greatly to continued insecurity and political conflict within the country. Does he really think an all-out assault on the poppies is going to bring peace and tranquility? Whether the idea of licensing Afghan opium production is a good idea is open for debate. It is certainly as reasonable a response to the problem as heavy-handed repression efforts, and is much less likely to incite peasant resistance and support for the Taliban. But what is really interesting about all this is the fact that the drug czar's office feels a need to attack supporters of the idea. That suggests the idea is getting enough traction to pose a threat to the drug war as usual. We'll be staying tuned to this debate.

Via The Houston Chronicle, here's what happens when the wrong people notice that the drug war is failing:

Frustrated by the nonstop flow of cocaine and heroin into the United States, some American lawmakers are promoting mycoherbicides, weed killers made from toxic, mold-like fungi that they believe could be used to eliminate illegal drug crops for good.

For years, mycoherbicides had been largely written off by many U.S. officials. They were concerned the fungi could mutate to kill legitimate crops and that their use overseas would violate the United Nations' 31-year-old Biological Weapons Convention and other treaties.

The whole "biological warfare is bad" argument is pretty strong, but there's more. The consensus against mycoherbicides includes some people who've never been correct about drug policy before:

U.S. Drug Czar John Walters voiced skepticism when questioned by [Rep. Dan] Burton at a congressional hearing about using Fusarium oxysporum on Colombia's coca fields.

"If you were to (use) it and it is not specific to coca, it could cause considerable damage to the environment, which in Colombia is very delicate," Walters said.
...

"Our judgement at the moment is that the case for mycoherbicides is not proven," said David Murray, a scientist* and one of Walters's deputies. "If there is a change in the evidence, we might revisit the issue."

But Dan Burton isn't listening, even though Walters and Murray are right for the first time ever:

"I'm telling you, the war on drugs ain't working," said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., in a telephone interview from Washington. "And if it ain't working, you don't sit around doing the same thing over and over again.

"We have to use whatever tools that we think will work and that are safe," he said, "and mycoherbicides fit that bill."

This is really something. Dan Burton sees that the drug war is failing, but he'd rather try every stupid idea on earth than admit that war can't solve the drug problem. As his frustration grows, it's frightening to think what else he might bring to the table.

Still, it's troubling that John Walters is against mycoherbicide. We've never known him to question the efficacy of various insane drug war strategies, and seeing him interpret science correctly makes me wonder if I fully understand the issue. Perhaps he merely objects to the premise that other eradication efforts have been an obvious failure.

If nothing else, this ridiculous conversation demonstrates that drug warriors like Dan Burton and Joe Biden are sick of erroneously claiming progress in the drug war. Let's hope their candor inspires others in Congress to propose real solutions.

*David Murray is a scientist now? He usually claims to be a doctor. I guess for his purposes, the two are interchangeable. At least he's citing his scientific credentials in opposition of biological warfare.

That's the central message of this new Above The Influence ad. There's another new one about how smoking pot is the same as putting leeches all over yourself.

Well shucks, it was fun while it lasted. See you all at Marijuana Anonymous.