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The Bush administration sold the PATRIOT Act's expansion of law enforcement powers, including "sneak and peek" searches in which the target of the search is never notified that his home has been searched, as necessary to defend the citizens of the US from terrorist attacks, but that's not how federal law enforcement has used its sweeping new powers. According to a July report from the Administrative Office of the US Courts (thanks to Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post), of 763 sneak and peek search warrants issued last year, only three were issued in relation to alleged terrorist offenses, or less than one-half of 1% of all such black-bag clandestine searches. Nearly two-thirds (62%) were issued to investigate drug trafficking offenses. The report also includes figures on existing warrants that were extended last year. When new and extended warrant figures are combined, the total number of warrants was 1,291, with 843, or 65%, for drug investigations. Only five of all new or extended sneak and peek warrants were for terrorism investigations. Of 21 criminal offense categories for which warrants were issued or extended, terrorism ranked 19th, exceeding only conspiracy and bribery. As Grim noted, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a leading critic of the PATRIOT Act, challenged Assistant Attorney General David Kris about why powers supposedly needed to fight terrorism were instead being used for common criminal cases. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence," said Kris. "It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases. "As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act," Feingold retorted, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers: That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary - quote - to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists," he said. "I think it's quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly breaks into Americans' homes in criminal cases, and I think some Americans might be concerned it's been used hundreds of times in just a single year in non-terrorism cases," the Wisconsin progressive continued. "That's why I'm proposing additional safeguards to make sure that this authority is available where necessary, but not in virtually every criminal case."

In a report released Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has found that drug-related deaths—the vast majority of them overdoses—increased dramatically between 1999 and 2006, and that drug-related deaths now outpace deaths from motor vehicle accidents in 16 states. That's up from 12 states the previous year and double the eight states in 2003. More people died from drug-related causes than traffic accidents in the following states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. According to CDC researchers, who examined death certificate data from around the country, some 45,000 died in traffic accidents in 2006, while 39,000 people suffered drug-related deaths. About 90% of the drug deaths were from overdoses, but researchers also included in that figure people who died of organ damage from long-term drug use. Researchers reported a sharp increase in deaths tied to cocaine and to the opioid analgesics, a class of powerful drug that includes fentanyl, methadone, morphine, and popular pain relievers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Cocaine-related deaths jumped from about 4,000 in 1999 to more than 7,000 in 2006, but methadone-related deaths increased seven-fold to about 5,000, and other opioid deaths more than doubled from less than 3,000 to more than 6,000. Oddly enough, heroin-related deaths actually declined slightly, hovering just below 2,000 a year throughout the period in question. And despite all the alarums about young people dying of drug overdoses, the 15-24 age group had the lowest drug-related death rate of any group except those over 65. Only about three per 100,000 young people died of drug-related causes in 2006, compared to six per 100,000 among the 25-34 age group, eight per 100,000 in the 35-44 age group, and 10 per 100,000 in the 45-54 age group. CDC researchers did not discuss causes for the increase in overall drug-related deaths or the rate of drug-related deaths, but several plausible (and complementary) explanations come to mind: the introduction and widespread use of Oxycontin, the fentanyl-tainted heroin epidemic that appeared in 2006, the increasing non-medical use of prescription pain relievers, and the increasing use of methadone as a pain reliever.

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr. Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war: Wednesday, September 23 Nine people were killed in a nine hour span in Ciudad Juarez. The dead included a beheaded man, and bullet-riddled bodies of three men and a woman found in a car. Additionally, another gunshot victim was found by the side of a road, and two bodies-one beheaded-were found wrapped in a blanket. The ninth victim was found dead inside a car. Four people were killed after a gun battle in La Crucita, Durango. The four dead, all men, were killed during a firefight between two groups of rival drug traffickers in a hillside community. Three bullet-riddled SUV's were left at the scene. Thursday, September 24 At least three US citizens were killed when gunmen attacked a motel in Ciudad Juarez, along with a Mexican man, whom police believe was the intended target. The two women who were killed were sisters. A high-ranking police official was ambushed in Sinaloa. The official, Jesús Adolfo Fierro Bojórquez, had called his wife to pick him up after his car broke down. She arrived to find him dead with a gunshot wound to the chest. Additionally, a police radio operatior was shot and killed in Ecatepec, near Mexico City, and 18 people were killed across Ciudad Juarez in a 24 hour period. Two men were killed in Tijuana, and three in Guerrero. Friday, September 25 Five suspected Sinaloa cartel assassins were arrested by the Mexican army in Ciudad Juarez. The men are thought to be involved in at least 45 murders, including the two recent attacks on drug rehabilitation centers in which 28 people were lined up against a wall and executed. Monday, September 28 In the resort town of Puerto Vallarta, two Canadian men were shot and killed in execution-style slayings. Gunmen attacked Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivan’s outside an apartment building, chasing them to the pool area before finally killing them. Canadian law enforcement officials were apparently aware of the two men, and believed they were deeply involved in the British Columbia cocaine trade. A former Juarez police officer was arrested over the weekend, and is suspected of taking part in at least 18 killings in the city. He was one of several arrests made by Mexican military and police forces in Juarez over the weekend. The ex-officer, Miguel Angel Delgado Carmona, 39, was captured with an accomplice following a vehicle chase after an aborted extortion attempt at a Juarez funeral home. He is also suspected of taking part in locating another 80 homicide victims, and was captured with two AK-47’s. Tuesday, September 29 In Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexican army elements took over police stations and surrounded a stadium where municipal vehicles are kept. They also interrogated local police officers about an incident that occurred on the 3rd of September, in which it is suspected that local police leaked information to drug traffickers who killed at two police officers and a fireman who were travelling unarmed. Wednesday, September 30 Army troops seized $7.3 million in cash from a house in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state. The raid came after soldiers received a tip from local residents who said they had seen several armed men at the house. Four handguns and four vehicles were also seized in the raid on the home, which is thought to have been a Gulf Cartel safe house. Three civilians were wounded when soldiers at a military checkpoint shot at the car in which they were travelling. The incident took place in Morelia, Michoacan. The three men in the car were apparently drunk, and security in the area was high because of a visit to the city by President Calderon. This is the latest in a series of shootings at road blocks set up by the military to stem the flow of drugs and arms moving along Mexico's roads. Body count for the last two weeks: 275 Body count for the year: 5,411

Fortune Magazine tags along with Afghanistan's minister of counternarcotics for a drug war victory party in which a huge stash of opium gets blown up with gasoline. Boom!

But afterward, as he is driven back into town in a black SUV with tinted windows, he seems restless, frustrated, perhaps a little defeated, as if he knows the morning's events were a set piece of political theater. As Kabul comes into view he points to a string of car dealerships and, with resignation, says that they are owned by traffickers. Passing a row of large, ornate homes -- commonly called "poppy palaces" or "narcotecture" -- he says drug money built them all. Then he sighs deeply, rubs his hands together, and stares through the darkened glass.

Cheer up, dude. At least you got to see a cool explosion.

I just read this USA Today article, Booming medical pot sales concern officials, and there's something missing. I get that there's lots of marijuana being sold in California and that the cops don’t like it, but so what? The article never actually explains why any of this is a bad thing. If the author thinks I can figure that out for myself, he screwed up, because the whole thing sounds great to me.

The last line quotes a cop complaining about people who look "very healthy" buying marijuana. I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is. Healthy people are a sign that the medicine works and everything is going well. Quit spying on healthy people and go help someone in need. This is ridiculous.

Matt Lauer hosts an interesting discussion of marijuana use among professional women. Seeing marijuana compared favorably to alcohol and coffee on The Today Show is pretty remarkable:

Lauer calls it "the changing face of pot smokers," yet nothing's actually changed except the way the media portrays it. As antiquated "reefer madness" marijuana reporting loses favor in the mainstream press, there emerges a whole world out there of basic facts and simple truths that can suddenly be revealed and discussed. It's progress to be sure, but it's still rather bizarre that marijuana use among intelligent professionals is being treated like breaking news.

Daily marijuana legalization protests in the Central Square in Keene, New Hampshire, led to one arrest Saturday for marijuana possession and one Sunday—but the victim in that arrest was later found to be smoking chocolate mint in his glass pipe and released without charges. The demonstrations began last Tuesday with a couple of dozen people gathering at 4:20 p.m. to toke up as an act of civil disobedience and call for marijuana law reform. After Saturday's arrest, the protests continued, with about 100 people showing up Monday. By Tuesday, the protests had spread to Manchester. The protests are being led by Free Keene, a local affiliate of the libertarian New Hampshire Free State Project. The project's stated goal is to persuade 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire in a bid to shift the politics of the low-population Granite State. Arrested Saturday was Richard Paul, 40, one of the protest organizers. Paul was arrested after police patrolling the square saw him smoking a joint. Protestors shouted at police, yelling "Leave him alone!" and "This is how they did it in Nazi Germany!" After the arrest, about 50 protestors followed Paul and police officers to the police station, where they shouted through the door and sat in a circle smoking marijuana. No more arrests were forthcoming, though. To confuse police at the protests at the square, some smokers smoked things other than marijuana. That was the case Sunday, when police arrested a protester identified only as "Earl" for puffing on a glass pipe. Embarrassingly for police, that substance turned out to be not marijuana but chocolate mint, and Earl was quickly released. Protests continued this week in Keene and have now spread to Manchester. In the latter town, protestors sparked up in the presence of police, but failed to provoke any arrests. Perhaps the cops have better things to do. And that's precisely the point.

We've been over this before, but as Marc Emery begins his journey through the American criminal justice system, I want to make sure everyone understands exactly why this is happening. It isn't because he sold lots of pot seeds and mailed them to customers in the United States. He did that, but it isn't what got him in trouble. Marc Emery was targeted for his marijuana reform advocacy and former DEA Administrator Karen Tandy even bragged about it:

"Today's arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."
…
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

It's important to remember this and not get caught up on the fact that, ya know, Marc Emery sold massive amounts of marijuana seeds to Americans. This is absolutely not about selling seeds. As Paul Armentano helpfully points out, you can still order marijuana seeds from Canada. Easily.

All we've accomplished is carving out a bigger market share for Emery's competitors, so there really isn’t even any debate to be had about whether the substance of the specific criminal charges had anything to do with the decision to extradite him and keep him in an American prison for several years at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

Today, Marc Emery's persecution provides nothing other than an ugly monument to the divisive drug war politics of the Bush era. This is the legacy that John Walters and Karen Tandy leave behind (remember it was Tandy who took down Tommy Chong as well) and it won't soon be possible for us to forget the infinitely vindictive and infantile behavior that characterized the bosses of Bush's drug war.

Yet, I truly believe that the attack on Marc Emery is symptomatic of the very same unhinged, frothing hysteria that has ultimately brought great shame on its authors and irrevocably reframed the drug war debate around the world. Bush's drug warriors destroyed their own credibility by constantly trying to get their names in the paper and, in the process, dealt a tremendous blow to everything they stood for. By the time Marc Emery is released from prison, this will probably be a lot more obvious to everyone than it is today.

Here's one from Michigan that's making a lot of people look bad:

BENTON HARBOR — Berrien County Prosecutor Arthur Cotter has dismissed 40 drug convictions since members of Benton Harbor’s police narcotics unit pleaded guilty to federal charges that they made up evidence, conducted illegal searches and wrongfully arrested people.
…
Cotter said that he is continuing to review the many cases that involved the two officers who comprised the city’s entire narcotics unit.

"They didn’t engage in misconduct in every single case they did," Cotter said. "The problem is that everybody who had a case now wants review." [Michigan Messenger]

No, people who want their cases reviewed are not the problem. The problem is that "the two officers who comprised the city’s entire narcotics unit" were lunatics. And it didn’t help that the department brushed citizen complaints under the rug.

It's hardly a unique or unusual story amidst the rich history of gratuitous civil rights abuses in the war on drugs. But it does provide a helpful illustration of the far-reaching consequences of drug war corruption: the police chief is being forced out, the city will have to pay huge sums to victims, the prosecutor's office is now preoccupied with freeing the innocent instead of jailing the guilty, and the public has one more reason not to trust or cooperate with police.

You can't possibly calculate how much damage is caused by just a handful of bad cops, which is exactly why so many departments bend over backwards to prevent this stuff from ever seeing the light of day. For every wretched episode of extreme police misconduct that gets exposed, far more remain buried beneath false reports, perjured testimony and broken accountability mechanisms.

We'll never know the true dimensions of the problem, but we know its origins. Police corruption emerges first and foremost from the enforcement of our filthy drug laws. Does anyone really need to read past the headline to find out which law enforcement activity it was that turned cops into criminals? It's the same story every time.

We've got two weeks worth of corrupt cops again: dope-peddling cops, dope-stealing cops, cops who rip off motorists, cops who rip off their departments, cops who take bribes, cops who squeal to dealers. Let's get to it (although a few more may dribble in by Friday): In Weston, Missouri, a Weston police officer was arrested September 22 on two drug-related charges. Officer Kyle Zumbrunn, 26, was arrested by officers of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at the request of the Atchison Police Department. He went down after selling a suspected controlled substance to a KBI undercover officer. Zumbrunn now faces charges of sale of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school and using a telephonic device to facilitate a drug transaction. In Watertown, Connecticut, a Waterbury police officer was arrested September 24 on a variety of drug charges. Officer Francis Brevetti, 29, was injured in a traffic accident the previous weekend, and when police towed his vehicle, they found drugs inside. He is now charged with possession of cocaine, possession of narcotics with intent to sell, possession of narcotics with intent to sell within 1,500 feet of a school, possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of marijuana with intent to sell within 1,500 feet of a school and possession of drug paraphernalia. In Baltimore, a Baltimore police officer assigned to a federal drug task force was arrested September 24 on charges he stole money and jewelry from houses targeted in drug raids and embezzled funds used to pay snitches. Officer Mark Lunsford, a six-year veteran, had been assigned to the Baltimore DEA, which conducts large-scale drug investigations. Now he's been assigned to a federal detention facility pending a bond hearing. In West Columbia, Texas, a former West Columbia police detective pleaded guilty September 21 to five felony charges, including two counts of tampering with physical evidence and theft of a firearm by a public servant. Former officer Joseph McElroy, 33, admitted to stealing a gun and cocaine from the department evidence room, forging signatures on department checks, and falsely signing a collection book receipt saying he had returned money to someone when he hadn't. In exchange for pleading guilty, McElroy gets one year in jail and 10 years on probation. In Miami, a former Miami-Dade County police officer pleaded guilty September 24 to stealing marijuana and cash from a driver during a traffic stop. Jesus Rodolfo Hernandez will do 30 days in jail for pulling over a confidential informant, arresting him for a traffic offense, and stealing marijuana and $575 in cash he found in the driver's back pocket. He pleaded guilty to grand theft, possession of marijuana and tampering with evidence. He will also spend two years on probation and must pay back the nearly $25,000 it cost to investigate and prosecute the case. In Philadelphia, a former Philadelphia police officer was convicted September 24 of tipping off a friend about an impending drug raid. Former Officer Rickie Durham, 44, was found guilty of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of lying to investigators for tipping off a cocaine kingpin hours before a raid four years ago, while he was working as a member of an FBI drug-gang task force. Durham now faces 12 to 15 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on January 6. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the former Holland police chief was sentenced September 18 to two years in prison for ripping off the town in various ways, including stealing seized drug money. Former Chief Kevin Gleason pleaded guilty to larceny by scheme of more than $250 and two counts of larceny of more than $250. He admitted to selling town-owned guns and rifles and pocketing the money, receiving $655 in reimbursements for a conference he never attended, and stealing $2,190 in seized drug money from a locker to which he had the only key. In Indianapolis, a former Indianapolis police officer was sentenced September 23 to 25 years in federal prison for using false search warrants or breaking into homes in order to steal drugs and cash. Former Officer Robert Long, 35, and two other now-convicted former officers were tracked by the FBI as they did their misdeeds. Long was found guilty in June of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 50 kilograms of marijuana, three counts of possession with intent to distribute a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of marijuana and attempt to possess with intent to distribute a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of marijuana. One of his comrades in crime took a plea deal and got the minimum 10 years in prison. A third renegade officer awaits sentencing. In New York City, a former Customs and Border Protection supervisor was sentenced September 24 to 10 years in federal prison for turning a blind eye to drug trafficking through JFK Airport. Walter Golembiowski, 66, a former Supervisory Customs and Border Protection Officer at JFK, pleaded guilty in March to narcotics conspiracy and two counts of bribery conspiracy. He must also pay $10,000 in fines and more than $2.5 million in asset forfeiture.