In the wake of the acquittal of the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team member who killed Tarika Wilson -- and with DC-area local Mayor Cheye Calvo pressing the issue of SWAT raids following the killing of his two dogs -- it bears reminding what the root cause was of both these horrible events and of many others -- a stupid, reckless, cowboy mentality, in which law enforcers who are supposed to be protecting us think it's fun and games until someone loses an eye (or a life). I've posted the following graphic before, but I'm posting it again, because it says it all. It appeared at the top of the Lima SWAT team's web page prior to the Wilson killing, before they took it down: Any questions?

PolitickerMD sent us a copy of their latest editorial cartoon, about the killing of two dogs by a Prince Georges County, Maryland, SWAT team: Click here for the original article. By the way, the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team, whose officer was just acquitted for the killing of Tarika Wilson and the maiming of her infant child, killed two dogs too. They shot people on one floor and dogs (pit bulls) on another. To be fair, the guy they were targeting supposedly unleashed the pit bulls on the officers who came after him downstairs. But that's no excuse -- he was defending himself from invaders of unknown nature who as far as he could tell intended to kill him -- had they not sent in a SWAT team for this minor situation, none of it would have happened at all.

Last month I posted some video highlights, filmed by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, from a recent NGO session convened by the United Nations drug agency in Vienna where many of our friends participated. HCLU has released some more videos from the session, "Abstinence First?," discussing the flaws of the abstinence-only model; "Student Drug Testing"; and War on Drugs: The New Jim Crow." Follow the links to read introductory comments by HCLU's Peter Sarosi before watching the videos, or just watch them here:

In my recent televised debate with the UK's Deirdre Boyd, the question came up of whether people involved in the illegal drug trade now would continue to operate -- as drug dealers or other criminals -- following legalization. I argued (video #3) that with all the money that currently goes into the criminal underground through the drug trade not being spent by people in that way anymore, there will be fewer jobs in crime. Illegal drug sellers won't be able to drop their prices enough to compete with the safe and inexpensive alternatives that legalization and regulation will provide for -- a certain level of profitability is needed to make it worth taking the substantial risk involved in being a criminal -- so they would no longer have customers. (Boyd argued that they would turn to "people trafficking," and there was no more time left in the segment, so I didn't get to respond that drug traffickers are investing their money in all kinds of places now, some of them probably illegal and abusive, so the last thing we should want is for them to continue to make even more money from drugs that they'll continue to invest in other places.) A post today in Small Business Trends reports on a study by economist Rob Fairlie which found a statistical relationship between being a teenage drug dealer and being self-employed as an adult. Fairlie accounted for factors like people having less formal education, or having criminal records that would tend to hinder them becoming other people's employees, and found that they didn't explain it. His conclusion is that entrepreneurs in both legal and illegal enterprises have some of the same characteristics. Matt Bandyk has an insightful follow-up on the US News & World Report entrepreneurship blog Risky Business, where he gets to the heart of the matter at hand:

Does drug prohibition change the incentives such that potential entrepreneurs pursue lives of crime rather than legitimate businesses?

My follow-up is to ask the related question: Do the violence and disorder of the illegal drug trade, which exists because of drug prohibition, drive away legitimate businesses that could provide quality job opportunities with the possibility of advancement for bright young people growing up in troubled neighborhoods who want to do something interesting? This is how I see it:

prohibition + continued drug use -> inner city drug crime and opportunity to work in crime crime -> less business investment -> fewer jobs -> difficulty finding work -> poverty crime -> arrests -> criminal records -> difficulty finding work -> poverty poverty -> crime, substance abuse, etc. arrests -> incarceration -> broken family & community relationships, training in crime opportunity to work in crime & training in crime -> people working in crime -> arrests, etc., and on and on and on...

So yes, I'd say that prohibition creates the wrong incentives -- maybe all the wrong incentives.

The week before last NGOs from around the world concerned with drug policy gathered at the United Nations Vienna location. I wasn't there, but friends of mine played an important role, and they did a great job. Check out these video interviews put together by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union: Find the HCLU web site here.

Yasha Spector of drugpolicycases.com has joined us in the Speakeasy with a discussion of the intersection of immigration law and drug law. As Spector, who works in immigration law, explains in some detail:

[P]retty much every drug offense is sufficient to permanently bar getting a green card or obtaining U.S. citizenship.

There are exceptions that the government can make in limited circumstances, but they are limited, and many more cases carry the likelihood of automatic deportation -- no judicial exceptions. Plea bargaining might help one avoid a prison sentence, but it doesn't help with the immigration problems. There was a little good news in this area courtesy the Supreme Court in 2006. But there is still little to be done in most cases, and people are being deported who for all intents and purposes have never lived in any other country than here.

A number of our readers wrote in this weekend to point out that drug czar John Walters was stumping the "marijuana causes mental illness" bandwagon. It was probably inevitable. After all, a year ago we reported, "Reefer Madness Strikes a Leading British Newspaper," and this and other spurious claims have continued to emanate from various outlets and agencies ever since. Still, propaganda is no less irritating for having anticipated it. So I could only sigh when I received a copy of a New York Times story that a member had forwarded, with his note "Walters is at it again." The article did quote people on the other side, which is good. But there's no way around the headline, which is what most people will ever read and which did not reflect any controversy or disagreement over the drug czar's claims. Master stats and criminology expert Matthew Robinson (author of the famed "Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics" picked a similar title for his detailed critique of Walters, "Here We Go Again: White House Makes Scary Claims About Marijuana." I'll leave it to readers to follow the link for the bulk of Robinson's analysis, but the major thing to keep in mind is that Walters has not met the three-level burden of proof to back up his claims. Those levels are the following:

1. One must show a correlation. Marijuana use and mental illness have to show up in many of the same people. That might not be so hard to demonstrate, but the reason for the correlation may be as simple as the fact that lots of people use marijuana, so most physicial or psychological issues may be represented among its users. Which leads to the second needed level:
2. One must show a temporal order. That is, it is necessary to prove that marijuana use preceded the onset of mental illness. If marijuana use began later, there obviously is no causation. Even if they start at about the same time, there may be no causation.
3. And then there is a third, very crucial intellectual requirement for drawing the conclusion that marijuana use causes mental illness. That is the need to demonstrate a "lack of spuriousness" -- which means eliminating the possibility that other factors could have led to both the marijuana use and the mental illness. For example, physical or other life issues may have led an individual to become depressed, and that person may have then begun using marijuana because of being depressed. Or there could be biological or personality factors that make both depression and drug use more likely. Or there could be other things going on.

And now you know more about statistics than the drug czar does. :)

Will SDSU's Drug Bust Reduce Drug Availability on Campus in the Future? Advocates Urge Media to Look Beyond the Surface, Ask Critical Questions About Raid's Long-Term Implications for Drug Trade (or Lack Thereof) In the wake of a major drug bust at San Diego State University, in which 96 people including 75 students were arrested on drug charges as part of "Operation Sudden Fall," advocates are asking media outlets to go beyond the surface to probe whether drug laws and enforcement actually reduce the availability of drugs. "Cocaine was banned in 1914, and marijuana in 1937," said David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, "and yet these drugs are so widely available almost a century later that college students can be hauled away 75 at a time for them. That is the very definition of policy failure." Borden, who is also executive editor of Drug War Chronicle, a major weekly online publication, continued: "Since 1980, when the drug war really started escalating under the Reagan administration, the average street price of cocaine has dropped by a factor of five, when adjusted for purity and inflation. (1) Given that the strategy was to increase drug prices, in order to then reduce the demand, that failure has to be called spectacular." Drug arrests in the US number close to 1.5 million per year, but to little evident effect as such data suggests. Ironically, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis painted a compelling picture of the drug war's failure in her own quote given to the Los Angeles Times: "This operation shows how accessible and pervasive illegal drugs continue to be on our college campuses and how common it is for students to be selling to other students." "While SDSU's future drug sellers will probably avoid sending such explicit text messages as the accused in this case did, it's doubtful that they will avoid the campus for very long," Borden said. "In fact the replacements are undoubtedly already preparing to take up the slack. By September if not sooner, the only remaining evidence that 'Operation Sudden Fall' ever happened will be the court cases and the absence of certain people from the campus." "Instead of throwing away money and law enforcement time on a policy that doesn't work, ruining lives in the process, Congress should repeal drug prohibition and allow states to create sensible regulations to govern drugs' lawful distribution and use. At a minimum, the focus should be taken off enforcement," said Borden. — END — 1. Data from DEA STRIDE drug price collection program, adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index figures. Further information is available upon request.

Two of my colleagues, Deborah Small and Prof. Harry Levine, have analyzed New York City's marijuana policy in a major report released Wednesday the New York Civil Liberties Union. The chart appearing above pretty makes the central point, but check out Jacob Sullum's piece in Reason for a good general discussion of the report's findings and implications. Also, Scott wrote here last night about an important side angle, why it's a bad idea to take out your marijuana to give it to police. Yesterday's is a must-read too. The report itself, and the authors' summary, are online here

Since Scott opined yesterday about the injustice of paramilitarized policing, I thought I would follow up by referring back to a related topic I've addressed from time to time -- coordinated drug busts as taxpayer-funded lobbying by law enforcement agencies, large numbers of raids conducted together as part of statewide operations, intended to garner publicity for a funding program known as the Byrne Grants and thereby avoid Congressional budget cuts. California and Kentucky were among the guilty parties last year, though I suspect they were not the only ones. Kentucky is at again, according to libertarian SWAT-critic Radley Balko of Reason magazine, writing last week for FoxNews.com:

Last month, police in Kentucy went on a 24-hour drug raid blitz. According to local media accounts, the raids uncovered 23 methamphetamine labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana, identified 16 drug-endangered children and arrested 565 people for illegal drug use. ... "During 'Operation Byrne Blitz,'" a local television station reported, "state police and highway patrol agencies, local police and sheriff's departments, and drug task forces throughout the country conducted undercover investigations, marijuana eradication efforts and drug interdiction activities. The collaborative effort, named for the federal grant program which funds many of the anti-drug efforts, underscored the impact that cuts to this funding could have on local and statewide drug enforcement."

Perhaps because they often are tied to drug arrest statistics, it was task funded by the Byrne grants that perpetrated the racist scandals in Tulia and Hearne, in which large numbers of minorities were rounded up and prosecuted, only for it all to turn out to be fabrication. In the Overkill report, Balko has identified the grants as one of the reasons for the overwhelming increase in the use of SWAT teams for minor drug enforcement. The Bush administration, surprisingly, has taken the lead in trying to slash Byrne funding, while Democrats have led efforts to restore it, such as NY Sen. Chuck Schumer at a press conference late last month. A letter signed by 51 senators asked the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations to restore cut Byrne funding, among them presidential contenders Clinton and Obama. To be fair to the candidates, some of our favorite senators unfortunately are on there too, such as Chris Dodd (D=CT), sponsor of the first Senate bill taking on the Higher Education Act drug penalty; Dick Durbin (D-IL); the justice-reform-minded Jim Webb (D-VA), others who've done some good things from time to time. Democrats clearly relish the support of national law enforcement unions, and it must be hard for any politician to resist getting to stand up next to law enforcement leaders at a press conference and call for more money for them. The Byrne grants fund other things besides arrests too, and the reasons for opposing the program may seem like harder sells from the point of view of a member of the "establishment" than it does for us out here. Also to be fair to the Democrats, those 51 signatories included 15 Republicans. A conservative commentator from the Heritage Foundation, Cully Stimson, also commented on FoxNews.com, but making the case for the grants, in Don't Burn the Byrne Grants, back in February. Still, if George Bush can get it right, I think it's lame for Democrats not to, especially when one of the results of this program is what happened in Tulia and Hearne, about as close to overt race-based persecution by government as can be found. I say, do burn the Byrne Grants, in fact please burn them. The fact that law enforcement groups quite transparently lobby for them by conducting massive numbers of drug busts to get attention ought to set off warning bells. Any good things the grants might also support can be funded through other channels. This program is badly structured and misdirected, and it should go.

residents of Chesapeake rallying behind Ryan Frederick Recently we reported on a tragic case in Chesapeake, Virginia, in which a forced-entry (e.g. "SWAT") raid on an extremely low-level drug suspect (he had just a few joints as it turned) ended with the resident, Ryan Frederick, fatally shooting police officer Jarrod Shivers out of fear for his life. It later came out -- at least as claimed by Frederick -- that the anonymous informant police relied upon before battering open Frederick's door had probably mistaken the Japanese maple trees he grew as a hobby for marijuana. Yet Frederick is in jail facing first-degree murder charges The Agitator reports that residents are rallying around Frederick, and that friends of his have created a Myspace page for him that links to a form to donate to his legal defense. Good for them. It's tragic that officer Shivers lost his life -- Frederick's supporters have said so themselves -- but at the end of the day there was no rational basis for police to enter his home in the terrifying manner that they did. To be clear, it is a pretty common way of doing things at this point in time -- roughly 40,000 SWAT raids are conducted every year, according to some estimates, and the vast majority are not for emergency or otherwise high-intensity situations -- but that doesn't make it a good idea and it doesn't make it right. Every time a raid is done, the people inside are subjected to a pretty significant psychological trauma, whether or not anyone gets hurt physically. And one only needs to watch the news to know that needless injury and death is bound to be the result sometimes, again and again. Police need to start taking responsibility for their actions. That means not blaming the victims of botched raids, like Ryan Frederick, for the predictable consequences reckless police tactics. And it means not using such reckless tactics to begin with. Since the nation's police are not about to do so willingly, the rest of us need to organize to force them to. If you haven't already, please sign our petition to limit the use of SWAT teams, and send it to your friends. And visit Ryan Frederick's Myspace page (linked above) to show your support. (Important: Please don't tear down Officer Shivers or say anything suggesting that he deserved what he got. Shivers was misled into what he did by a bigger problem existing in police culture, or at least that is what happened so far as I can tell. And negative comments about him won't help our cause, but could alienate people who might otherwise listen to what we have to say.)

One of the reasons to already be unhappy with the choice of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General is his opposition to retroactively applying the minor sentencing reductions that the US Sentencing Commission enacted for federal crack cocaine prisoners. Former prisoner Malakkar Vohryzek has called him out for fear-mongering distortions on the issue over at D'Alliance. With a little number crunching, Vohryzek finds that in New York City, for example, if every application for a sentencing reduction is approved, all of eight people serving crack cocaine sentences will get out an return to the community a little early. Yet Mukasey has somehow predicted a "crime wave." Shame on him. The NAACP's Hilary Shelton -- a stalwart of the campaign to restore college aid eligibility to students who've lost it because of drug convictions, an effort many of you have read about here -- had strong words for Mukasey (via the Sentencing Law and Policy blog):

The NAACP was both saddened and offended by Attorney General Michael Mukasey's call for Congress to override the decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to apply their May 2007 decision to reduce the recommended mandatory minimum sentencing range for conviction of possession of crack cocaine retroactive to those already in prison. "Attorney General Mukasey's characterization of people currently in prison for crack cocaine convictions, and of the impact that a potential reduction in their sentences could have on our communities, is not only inaccurate and disingenuous, but it is alarmist and plays on the worst fears and stereotypes many Americans had of crack cocaine users in the 1980s," said NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary O. Shelton. "The fact that a federal judge will be called to review every case individually and take into account if there were other factors involved in the conviction, whether it be the use of a gun, violence, death or the defendant's criminal history before determining if the retroactivity can apply, appears to have eluded the Attorney General," Shelton added. "Furthermore, because more than 82 percent of those currently in prison for federal crack cocaine convictions are African Americans and 96 percent are racial or ethnic minorities, the NAACP is deeply concerned at the Attorney General's callous characterization that many of the people in question are 'violent gang members'."

Also quoted on Sentencing Law and Policy, criticism of Mukasey by the New York Times.

We've reported here extensively on the thousands of extra-judicial killings by Thailand police of supposed drug offenders during the regime of now-deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Following the coup which took Thaksin out of power, a government panel prompted by calls from human rights organizations determined that most of Thaksin's murder victims were not even involved with drugs. Recently the Thai government voted to bring the monsters back into power by electing Thaksin crony Samak Sundaravej as the new prime minister. He has already shown his stripes -- reporting from the Associated Press, via Drug WarRant:

New Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej insisted Friday that he is not a puppet of deposed leader Thaksin Shinawatra, despite having boasted during campaigning that he was Thaksin's proxy. [...] Samak also said the new government will reintroduce Thaksin's controversial approach to combatting drug trafficking, defending the "drug war" conducted by Thaksin's government that led to the death of about 2,500 people in 2003-2004. [...] Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung said Thursday that the ministry would launch a tough anti-drug campaign, particularly in border areas, that will yield results within 90 days.

How many drug war murders will Sundaravej commit? Have some Thai police officers already taken the encouragement to resume the rampage?

Pete Guither over at Drug WarRant has spotted a report on what looks to be a suspiciously large number of drug busts -- 17, with 11 more warrants pending, all following a six-month undercover investigation -- in the sparsely populated Twiggs County in Georgia. Twiggs has 10,184 residents, at latest count -- the largest city, Jeffersonville, boasts a mere 1,028 residents. The county is so small, in terms of its population, that there is exactly one auto repair shop. Which raises the question, can a county that small really support 28 drug dealers? The same question came up in the Tulia scandal, where about 46 people, almost all of them black, were convicted and imprisoned for drug dealing based on the testimony of a rogue cop, who as it turns out had made it all up. Many of the names listed in the indictment have an African American sound to them. Comments from local officials also raise questions about the operation's timing. In issue #520 of the Chronicle, we reported that Congress had substantially cut funding for the federal grant programs that support these kinds of task forces and that law enforcement organizations were engaged in a massive lobbying/media campaign to try to get the funding back. Twiggs police clearly had that situation in mind when they spoke with the press:

Officials, however, are concerned about the future of such major operations. Special agent Martin Zon of the GBI's state drug task force said federal funding for the task force has been cut by nearly 70 percent in the newest budget. Once it takes effect in July, the budget cuts could hamper law enforcement efforts in the drug war. "We've been a recipient of these funds for many years, and in December we learned that these grants would be cut drastically," Zon said. "Our budget was cut by 70 percent, which cuts our ability to fulfill requests from places like Twiggs." Mitchum said he's also concerned that he may not have certain state resources to call upon in the future. "The task force is a big help to departments our size," he said. "We use their equipment, their personnel, their expertise. We wouldn't want to see their funding cut. It's really important they keep it."

If it is a case of law enforcement busting people as taxpayer-funded lobbying for funding, it would be nothing new -- Pete pointed out such a case in Kentucky last year, and I noted a 2006 press release from the California Attorney General's office that directly admitted it, in a previous blog post on that topic. There are other examples, too.

The following oddly-worded advertisement, presumably computer-generated, popped up in one of our Google ad boxes:

Prohibition Looking for Prohibition? Find exactly what you want today. Yahoo.com

Sad but true. Not forever, though, if we have our way...

Radley Balko pointed out on The Agitator that the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team's web site had an animated gif on it which seemed to fire into the faces of web site visitors: Check out Google's cached copy of the page here to see it in context. Since they killed 26-year-old Tarika Wilson, an innocent mother of six, and maimed her youngest son, a one-year-old, they've taken the violent image off of the site, though. It's not hard to see why they "went in shooting" to her home, as Wilson's sister described it. A policing, SWAT team culture that would allow such an image to go on their own official home page, is a culture that is simply prone to reckless, "cowboy" behavior. Frankly, it seems like they were having a little too much fun being a SWAT team. As the saying goes, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." This time it was a life that was lost, and a child's finger. But it was never fun for the people on the other end. According to the web page, the Lima SWAT team conducts about 50 raids a year, about once a week. I looked up the city's population to try and get a sense of how much that is, and it's a mere 38,219 (estimate July '06). That's bigger than Mayberry, but it's not a metropolis by any means. So I think that one SWAT raid a week there is a huge number. One would think one was living in Baghdad, for such extreme measures to be used once a week in a jurisdiction that size. The page says that most of the raids were on crack houses. There's the explanation -- they are using the SWAT team not for the extreme or emergency situations that SWAT is meant for, but on routine drug enforcement. The federal government is probably funding them on a per-arrest basis. I can't imagine it's pleasant to live near a crack house. But the overwhelming majority of crack houses don't have drug kingpins or terrorists hiding in them. The appropriate approach is to knock and announce, wait an appropriate amount of time, and then if the door hasn't been opened, to force it open but to do so cautiously. (Actually the appropriate approach is to put the crack houses out of business through legalization, but that's another issue.) Drug dealers are not in the business to kill cops and become the most hunted fugitives on the planet. Drug dealers are trying to make money. Police don't need to enter in dramatic and sudden force to protect their lives. The dealers aren't going to shoot them, they're going to try to disappear or hide or dispose of the evidence. Last year we looked into police officer fatalities doing drug enforcement, and out of two million drug arrests per year we could only find four of them in all of 2006, with only two of those directly related to drug arrests. In the rare situations when you need a SWAT team, it's important that it be there for you. Lima's almost two hours from the nearest big city, Columbus, so maybe they should have their own. But I can only say maybe, partly because there would be at least one more living person in Lima now if they didn't. They certainly shouldn't be using it 50 times a year. PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS

In November 2006, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was killed by police during a raid conducted at the wrong house. Ms. Johnston fired at the police officers as they were breaking in through her living room window. Three officers were injured, but Ms. Johnston was struck 39 times and died at the scene. In July 2007, Mike Lefort, 61, and his mother, Thelma, 83, were surprised and thrown to the ground when Thibodeau, Louisiana police burst into the wrong house with a "no knock" warrant. Thelma suffered from a spike in her blood pressure and had a difficult time overcoming the shock. In March 2007, masked police officers in Jacksonville, Florida, mistakenly burst into the home of Willie Davis, grandfather of murdered DreShawna Davis, and his mentally disabed son. The pair were forced to the ground, where they watched helplessly as police tore apart the memorabilia from DreShawn's funeral. The drug sale that never happened was said to involve all of two crack rocks worth $60.

One would think after Atlanta police killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, that they would get the idea, but they haven't. Last Friday, 1/4/08, a SWAT team, serving an ordinary drug search warrant, invaded the Ohio home of Tarika Wilson -- an innocent woman -- shot and killed her, and shot her one-year-old son. "They went in that home shooting," her mother said at a vigil that night. The boy lost at least one of his fingers. Two dogs were shot too. SWAT teams were created to deal with extreme situations, not routine ones. Yet police now conduct tens of thousands of SWAT raids every year, mostly in low-level drug enforcement. The result is that people like Wilson and Johnston continue to die in terror, with many thousands more having to go on living with trauma. But it's all for a drug war that has failed and can't be made to work. It's time to rein in the SWAT teams. Please sign our online petition: ">Enough is Enough: Petition to Limit Paramilitary Police Raids in America." A copy will be sent in your name to your US Representative and Senators, your state legislators, your governor, and the president. When you're done, please tell your friends and please spread the word wherever you can. This is a first step. Take it with us today, and there can be more. Enough is enough -- no more needless deaths from reckless SWAT raids! Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for more information about this issue, including our October Zogby poll showing that 66% of Americans, when informed about the issue, don't think police should use aggressive entry tactics when doing routine drug enforcement.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS

StoptheDrugWar.org (still known to many of our readers as DRCNet, the Drug Reform Coordination Network), is an international organization working for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and for reform of drug policy and the criminal justice system in the US. Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle for the latest issue of our acclaimed weekly newsletter, Drug War Chronicle.

This column came out on December 30th, but it's still noteworthy. Cynthia Tucker, Editorial Page Editor with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, opined, "Decades Later, War on Drugs is Still a Loser." Though Tucker doesn't directly come out for legalization, she suggestively asks, "Isn't it time to admit that this second Prohibition has been as big a failure as the last -- the one aimed at alcohol?" And one of the points she makes is that "thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched." The creation of profits for criminals is a key anti-prohibitionist argument. Check it out here...

Jeralyn Merritt provides an overview of Barack Obama's record on criminal justice and drug policy issues, on the TalkLeft blog.

There are "good guys" and "bad guys" in Congress. More accurately, perhaps, there are members of Congress who do good things at least some of the time, and members of Congress who do bad things some of the time. Among the latest good guys are Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, and 32 cosponsors of her bill H.R. 4545, the "Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007," introduced 12/13. H.R. 4545 would ameliorate some of the atrocity that is federal mandatory minimum sentencing by reducing crack cocaine penalties to equal those existing for powder cocaine. The Supreme Court ruling and the Sentencing Commission recommendations that came down recently don't help with the mandatory minimums, but only help with sentencing guidelines cases. The bill also includes language intended to focus federal drug enforcement activity on high-level players instead of small-timers as they do now. One of the latest bad guys is Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican also of Texas, the sponsor of H.R. 4842, introduced 12/19, a nasty bill to reverse the Sentencing Commission's positive ruling in favor of making the recent crack sentencing reductions retroactive. Smith only has eight cosponsors, as compared with Jackson-Lee's 32, and Jackson-Lee has the chairman of the subcommittee of Judiciary that would consider it, Bobby Scott (D-VA). I don't see John Conyers (D-MI) on there yet, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee itself, but he's just as much on our side as Scott is. I don't think Smith has much of a chance on this one, but you never know. Jackson-Lee has been a strong support of our efforts repealing the Higher Education Act's drug provision, and spoke at our 2005 press conference: