New DOJ data confirming that minorities receive harsher treatment than whites during traffic stops came as no surprise to us. Last week I discussed the study, warning that DOJ's poor reporting could embolden racial profiling apologists, despite the obvious disparities revealed in the data. Unfortunately, I was right.

Profiling skeptic Steve Chapman now exploits DOJ's report in a widely published editorial that's as sloppy as it is wrong:

Why would black drivers be arrested more often? Maybe because African-Americans commit crimes at a far higher rate and are convicted of felonies at a far higher rate. In 2005, for instance, blacks were nearly seven times more likely to be in prison than whites.

This is textbook circular reasoning of the sort that will earn you an F in Philosophy 101. By Chapman's logic, police could stop investigating white people entirely and we'd soon see that minorities commit 100% of all crimes.

By relying on the argument that increased searches of minorities are justified by their criminality, Chapman exposes his own unfamiliarity with the data he's discussing. The previous DOJ report, released in 2005, addresses this issue directly:

Likelihood of search finding criminal evidence

Searches of black drivers or their vehicles were less likely to find criminal evidence (3.3%) than searches of white drivers (14.5%), and somewhat less likely than searches of Hispanic drivers (13%).

This data comes straight from a report referenced by Chapman, yet he insists that "a motorist of felonious habits is also more likely to have illegal guns or drugs on board," and "the average black driver is statistically more likely to be a criminal than the average white driver."

The great irony here is that Chapman offers his made up statements about the heightened criminality of minorities while arguing that racial profiling doesn’t exist. His premise fundamentally endorses profiling and any officer who agrees with him is highly vulnerable to the exact behavior Chapman denies. It is really just priceless to find gratuitous racial stereotypes in an article about how the days of gratuitous racial stereotyping are behind us.

DRCNet bumper sticker on a car at the SF marijuana march I'll be writing this week about the Global Marijuana Marches that were set to take place in 232 cities Saturday. I drove into San Francisco for the event there, and I've gathered some initial reports from around the globe. Look for a full run-down in the Chronicle on Friday. Saturday was glorious in San Francisco, with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. San Francisco's version of the global marijuana march, Cannabis Awareness Day, was at City Hall plaza, where rows of vendors and exhibitors bracketed the crowd and local bands blasted rock, surf, pop, and rhythm & blues at the crowd. The San Francisco event was long on music, short on rhetoric—"We've heard all that pot talk before," said one organizer from the stage—and extremely mellow. What pot politics there was came around making too much money off the dispensaries, with some speakers warning that the greedy would be weeded out. Jack Herer held court in one tent as star-struck fans sought autographs and pictures. There was lots of open pot-smoking, and not a policeman in sight all afternoon. It was like a lovely afternoon in the community park. Things weren't so mellow in Eastern Europe. In Sofia, Bulgaria, police dispersed a crowd of about 400 demonstrators, blocking the event from taking place. It was worse in Moscow, Russian police attacked ralliers, arrested 30 and beating others. Some have already been sentenced to jail time. In Prague, by contrast, authorities stood aside as about 1500 held a pot party at Letna Plain. The largest rally reported so far was in Toronto, where "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery led a crowd of about 20,000 in calling for freeing the weed. I haven't heard anything from other European capitals or the big cities of Latin America yet. Meanwhile, down under at the Nimbin Mardi Grass festival in Austalia, police reported more than 100 arrests, 60 of them for marijuana, among the more than 7,000 festival-goers. What does all this mean? What does it accomplish? Look for some rumination on these questions as well as more scene reports on Friday. (Click the "read full post" link or here for more pictures.)

In the aftermath of the infamous "soap bust" of drummer Don Bolles of "The Germs" fame, Dr. Bronner's has released a video showing the NarcoPouch field drug test coming up with false positives for a range of natural soap products. Curiously "fake" soaps that are actually detergent-based are coming up negative. Read the full press release here. Watch the video (which also includes TV news footage about the incident) via YouTube below:

I did not notice this open letter from Dr. Hurwitz's brother when it came out late last month, but I think it is worth a read.

My friend Grant Smith over at Drug Policy Alliance has commented on NIDA research to develop vaccinations and the philosophical implications of "robbing entire future generations of the basic human right to have freedom of choice and sovereignty over their bodies and minds." As a follow-up, I'd like to point out here the danger from a straight medical perspective. The questions of whether a vaccine will work, what its side effects may be, and what the likelihood is of experiencing such side effects are questions that go along with the development of any new medication. But there is something fundamentally different -- medically and scientifically -- about the concept of a vaccine to permanently disable a person from experiencing the effects of ingesting a drug. First, the neurological system that goes to work when one tries to "get high" is intimately tied to the rest of our neurology -- getting a thrill from chocolate or a rush from exercise, for example, involves some of the same chemical interactions in the brain that are involved in smoking a cigarette or snorting cocaine. I'm not saying that the acts are the same, but they are biochemically similar and related. They have to be -- each of us only has one brain, after all. Second, most drugs, both legal and illegal, either are used medically now or are highly similar to drugs that are used medically now. Cocaine and methamphetamine are both schedule II substances -- highly regulated, but used in medicine. Meth is from the same family as the widely used Ritalin. Heroin is a close variant of morphine. I don't know of current medical uses for nicotine, but I don't think it can be categorically ruled out for all time. Could a vaccination to block the euphoric effects of these drugs interfere with the ability of the same or similar drugs to produce the medical benefits for which they are also used? The only way to really know for sure is to do test people for it. But because only a fraction of all children go on to experience the medical problems that would be treated by the drugs, to do such a test and have sufficient data for it to be meaningful would require vastly expanding the number of kids who have to be given the vaccination initially as part of the research. And possibly excepting Ritalin use, the data would not come in for several decades, because most people acquire the afflictions for which the medications are used late in life. So in addition to the disturbing philosophical implications that Grant has explored, I really see this direction as inherently reckless from a straight medical perspective -- there is just no truly reliable way to know whether the treatment administered to toddlers or grade-schoolers now could put them in a box with respect to medical treatment down the road -- there's just no feasible way to gather enough data in advance, and if we did we might still not find out for 70 years. Rank this one right up there with the drug-fighting franken-fungus -- don't go there!