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Book Review: How to Regulate Stimulants

How to Regulate Stimulants: A Practical Guide by Steve Rolles, Harvey Slade, and James Nicholls (2020, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, 304 pp., $20 PB)

Marijuana is now legal, taxed and regulated in 15 states, with most of the Northeast likely to join them next year. The movement for psychedelic liberation is flexing its muscles. Oregon just voted to decriminalize the possession of personal use amounts of all drugs. Brick by brick the wall of drug prohibition is crumbling in the United States.

And now, the good folks at Britain's Transform Drug Policy Foundation are out with a how-to guide for turning that wall into nothing more than a pile of bricks. When it comes to attacking prohibition, marijuana and psychedelics are the low-hanging fruit -- it's easier for members of the public to consider that the harms attributed to their potential abuse or misuse may be far outweighed by the harms of prohibiting them -- but with stimulants such as meth, Ecstasy, and cocaine, the case for prohibition is more popular because the potential harms of their abuse or misuse are much greater.

Still, Steve Rolles and his coauthors make a strong, thoughtful case for dealing with these drugs as we do other non-banned psychoactive substances: Regulating and offering them to consumers with restrictions based on the degree of risk involved. Caffeine is a stimulant, but one with low risk levels for users and society. It is subject only to the regulations of normal commerce -- quality control, informational packaging, and the like.

Coca leaf, coca tea, and oral coca products (lozenges, hard candies, pouches) have a similar risk profile to caffeine -- that is, not much. But both international and US law fail to differentiate between such products with low levels of the cocaine alkaloid and cocaine itself. A regulatory regime based on reason and science would treat coca tea like coffee, not cocaine. But that doesn't mean cocaine would be prohibited.

Indeed, Rolles et al. explicitly differentiate between different forms of stimulants to create a three-tiered regulatory system based not only on science, public health, human rights, but also recognizing the need to prevent corporate takeover and promote social equity. The first tier is the tier of coca tea and coffee.

The second tier, that of medium risk drugs in their typology, produces what they call their "standard model" for dealing with stimulants. Included here are MDMA pills, amphetamine pills (or meth pills -- Desoxyn, anyone?), and cocaine powder. For this tier, they recommend pharmacy-style retail sales at state-owned shops where specially trained druggists dispense not only the dope but also targeted harm reduction information.

And they recommend rationing of these substances, either by purchase amount limits or by means of licensing requirements. The idea is to limit harm by restricting access to these particularly binge-inducing drugs. Rationing is what we do with legal marijuana by restricting purchases, typical to one ounce per day. We don't do that with alcohol, however; you can walk in and buy multiple kegs of beer or cases of hard liquor and no one bats an eye.

Purchase limits -- say one gram of 70% pure powder cocaine per month -- would probably work for most cocaine consumers, who use it recreationally and infrequently. But it wouldn't work for the party host who wants to supply his guests, and more importantly, it wouldn't suffice for the needs of serious drug users, who make up a huge percentage of the sales of any drug.

If the object is to take drug consumers out of the illicit market, rationing is going to have to be flexible enough to address their needs and demands. The authors suggest a tiered system that would allow larger purchases contingent on periodic brief discussions of risks and harm reduction with trained pharmacy vendors.

When it comes to the hardest forms of stimulants, such as injectable meth or cocaine or smokable meth or crack, the model shifts from regulatory retail to harm reduction. The authors advocates measures such as supervised consumption sites and harm reduction kits for crack users. They envision no retail sales of drugs in such forms, but also no criminalization of their users. That might leave users to get their goodies in the black market (or get creative with less harmful forms of the drug, such as converting cocaine powder into crack at home), which could undercut one of the primary rationales for regulation: killing off the illicit market.

But instead of sticks, Rolles et al. offer carrots. Perhaps hardcore tweakers and cokeheads can be induced into using less harmful forms of their drugs of choice, switching from shooting meth to eating oral amphetamines or being offered less-potent powder cocaine formulations with a price incentive. Not discussed is whether users of tier three substances would have some way of obtaining a regulated supply of them through a medical or other non-sales framework.

Regulating stimulant drugs is tricky, with all sorts of different considerations to undertake. But we have a freedom interest, a social justice interest, and a public health interest in moving away from coercive drug prohibition. The Transform Drug Policy Foundation shows us some of the possible paths and is acutely aware of the intricacies of the task. This is very useful stuff. We should all probably send copies of this book to our state and federal elected officials, but not wait for them before starting down the path ourselves.

Mexico Marijuana Legalization Bill Advances, Senate Approves Meth "Emerging Drug Threat" Bill, More... (11/19/20)

Madison WI ends penalties for pot use and possession, Vancouver, BC to take up a drug decriminalization ordinance, Mexican marijuana legalization bill heads for a Senate floor vote, and more.

seized methamphetamine in Georgia (Warner Robbins PD)
Marijuana Policy

North Carolina's Governor Racial Equity Task Force Calls for Marijuana Decriminalization, Study of Legalization. Gov. Roy Cooper's (D) Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice has recommended that the state study marijuana legalization and enact decriminalization in the meantime. Attorney General Josh Stein (D) who co-chairs the task force, made the case succinctly: "You cannot talk about improving racial equity in our criminal justice system without talking about marijuana," he said.

Madison, Wisconsin, City Council Votes to Remove Penalties for Marijuana Use, Possession. The city's Common Council unanimously approved three marijuana-related ordinances Tuesday that should reduce pot arrests in the state's capital. One allows adults to possess up to an ounce, another allows them to consume it on public or private property, and a third decriminalizes the possession of pot paraphernalia.

Methamphetamine

Senate Approves Meth Bill by Unanimous Consent. The Senate on Monday approved SB 4612, the Methamphetamine Response Act. The bill declares meth "an emerging drug threat" and requires the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP -- the drug czar's office) to come with a response plan within 90 days. That plan, which must be updated annually, must include an assessment of threat, as well as treatment and prevention programs and law enforcement programs. It must also set the level of funding needed to implement the plan. The House version of the bill, HR 8210, is parked in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is where it has been since being introduced.

International

Vancouver Mayor to File Motion to Decriminalize Drug Possession. Vancouver, British Columbia, Mayor Kennedy Stewart announced Wednesday that he will file a motion to decriminalize the possession of illicit drugs in the city. "It's not a criminal issue, it's a health issue," he said, saying the move is "long overdue." If the council passes the measure, the city will ask the federal government to "decriminalize personal possession of illicit substances within the City's boundaries for medical purposes."

Mexico Denies Threatening to Expel DEA Agents After Ex-Defense Minister's Drug Arrest. President Andres Manual Lopez Obrador denied Thursday that Mexico had threatened to expel American DEA agents to retaliate for the arrest of ex-Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos upon arrival at LAX last month. At the same time, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico had threatened a review of security cooperation because the US did not provide advance notice that Cienfuegos was under investigation, but said there was no specific threat to expel DEA agents.

Mexican Senate Committees Approve Marijuana Legalization Bill. The marijuana legalization bill has been formally approved by the Senate Justice, Health, and Legislative Studies committees and is headed for a full floor vote soon. The bill would legalize the possession of up to an ounce by adults and allow the cultivation of up to four plants for personal use. It would also set up a taxed and regulated marijuana market.

How the 6th Amendment Helped a Texas Man Overturn His Meth Trafficking Conviction [FEATURE]

Criminal Court & Legal Affair Investigative Journalist Clarence Walker can be reached at [email protected].

A Fifth Circuit appeals court reversed a recent drug conviction against an Austin, Texas man based on the prosecutor's  illegal use of an "out-of-court" hearsay statement made by a snitch who told a DEA agent that the defendant had purchased a substantial amount of methamphetamine from another person. Federal prosecutors never brought the snitch forward to testify at trial that Coy Jones had, in fact, done a drug deal. Instead, prosecutors allowed a DEA agent to testify to the jury that the snitch had told the agent that the deal had gone down, and that Jones was in possession of big-time dope. The appeals court mandate in Jones case was issued on May 19, 2019. 

Federal District Judge Sam Sparks erred by allowing certain testimony in the Coy Jones case. (UScourts.gov)
Following four days of testimony, a jury in the Western District of Texas in Austin convicted Coy Jones in October 2017. On January 29, 2018, federal judge Sam Sparks gave Jones, a Native American, 30 years in a federal joint for methamphetamine trafficking and gun-related charges as a result of an alleged witness (the snitch) -- who never appeared in court, and whom Jones never got a chance to confront and cross-examine, as required by law under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution.

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the "right" to be confronted by the witnesses against him." Under the statute, accused defendants are given the opportunity to face prosecution witnesses against them in order to dispute the witnesses' testimony. This guarantee applies to both statements made in court, including statements made outside of court that are offered as evidence during trial. 

In a lengthy ruling, the Fifth Circuit said: "The government has therefore failed to meet its burden to show harmless error as to Jones' conviction for possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine and possession of a firearm." Here, the court added, "the inadmissible evidence was highly incriminating. Jones denied possessing the drugs and no drugs were found in his possession and no officer witnessed a drug transaction on May 3,2017.

Attorney Santosh Aravind successly appealed Coy Jones' conviction.
"We hold that Jones' rights under the Confrontation Clause were violated when a law enforcement officer testified, he knew Jones had a large amount of methamphetamine because of what the officer was told by a confidential informant. We therefore vacate Jones convictions and the related revocation of his supervised release and remand for a new trial,” the Fifth Circuit panel said. 

A DEA agent testified in open court about what the snitch allegedly told him about Jones meeting up with another narcotics dealer, which amounted to unsubstantiated hearsay. Although police never saw Jones purchase drugs, they and prosecutors relied on the words of the undercover snitch who said he made calls to other individuals who, in turn, told him the transaction had taken place. So, at this point, the government used double hearsay to convict Coy Jones.

"Everyone deserves the right to confront their accusers in court," retired criminal defense attorney Craig Washington told Drug War Chronicle.

But no such confrontation took place in this case. Federal prosecutors Matt Harding and Daniel Guess argued the use of "out-of-court" hearsay testimony by the informant was only to explain the officers" investigative tactics during the investigation.

Fifth Circuit judges concurred that the trial judge in Jones' case shouldn't have allowed prosecutors to elicit the snitch's hearsay testimony from the DEA agent about what he was told concerning the alleged drug purchase that Jones supposedly made with another suspect.

When Jones attorney Santosh Aravind objected at trial to the snitch's testimony and other detailed information the officers received from the missing witness against Jones, the judge overruled Aravind's timely objection, agreeing with the prosecutors that  the officers' references to what the informant told them was more to explain the officers' actions rather than vouch for the truth about what the informant said. 

Prior to trial, Jones' attorney Santosh Aravind filed a 403 motion to force the government prosecutors to disclose the identity of the informant. In response, prosecutors argued against identifying and bringing forth the informant because "the informant only gave a tip, and that the informant was not on the scene on any of this and would not be a fact witness." 

The Arrest of Coy Jones

The long, winding road to Coy Jones' federal conviction was the result of a hearsay statement by a "streetwise snitch." The showdown encapsulated a cast of dubious characters on Wednesday, May 3, 2017. On this eventful day in Jones' life, DEA agent Royce Clayborne received a tip from his prize-winning informant.

The informant told Claiborne that a drug deal would go down at a Valero gas station in Travis County, Texas. The DEA surveillance team, along with Austin police officers, observed Jones arrive in a vehicle. Jones parked next to a truck driven by a roommate of Fredy Cruz-Ortiz. DEA agents initially targeted Cruz-Ortiz, not Jones, because Cruz-Ortiz was the ring-leader of a meth trafficking ring. DEA agents and Cedar Park Detective Michelle Langham would later testify that they observed Coy Jones make a gesture to the other driver. Following the gestures, both vehicles drove off simultaneously.

 DEA agents had no direct knowledge that a drug deal had gone down until the informant told agent Claiborne by phone that a transaction had taken place and that the drivers had left the Valero parking lot. Officers immediately followed both vehicles as they headed towards County Road 213. This area is a lightly traveled rural road. When both vehicles briefly passed out of view and then reappeared into sight, Detective Langham spotted both drivers on County road 213 talking. When Jones and the other man departed, they drove off in different directions. 

Keep in mind, at this point, the officers never saw a dope exchange between Coy Jones and the other man he met on the night of May 3, 2017 nor did officers see Jones in a drug transaction on two prior occasions when he met with the alleged meth dealer. And on that night, the officers never saw Jones with a gun. They only had suspicions about drugs based on the tip from the informant.

The unidentified man, who was suspected to be the roommate of the meth ringleader identified as Cruz-Ortiz, was not  followed or stopped after his separate encounters with Jones. Officers instead continued to follow Jones as he finally turned onto County road 201. Detective Langham dispatched a sheriff's deputy to stop Jones by using a pretext traffic violation. 

When the deputy activated his emergency red light to pull over Jones' vehicle, Jones' vehicle sped up, accelerating up to 90 miles per hour with the officers in hot pursuit. The chase lasted for at least two miles.

During the ensuing chase, none of the officers or agents saw Jones throw a weapon from his vehicle, yet when Jones' vehicle came to a screeching halt both windows rolled down. With guns drawn, officers arrested Jones and searched his vehicle, but no drugs or firearms were found.

Where is the Dope?

Unable to find dope on Coy Jones--either in or around his vehicle -- the officers grew increasingly frustrated. 

Perhaps the officers should have freed Coy Jones because they did not have an iota of evidence that he was guilty of a crime, right? 

But these hounds smelled blood.

"Let's get a K-9 out here," an officer said. Officers used the K-9 dog to retrace the route of the road that Jones and the officers had traveled during the chase. After 'one to two' hours of searching, officers discovered an unloaded pistol in a 'cactus patch'. Then, finally, on the opposite side of the road, approximately 'a half mile' from where the gun was found, an officer recovered a zip lock bag containing 982 grams of methamphetamines.

Detective Langham testified at trial that both the gun and the meth were found in an area "where the sheriff's deputy lost sight of Jones as he sped down County road 201."

DEA agents interrogated Coy Jones on the same night he was arrested.  When agents accused him of intentionally fleeing to avoid being caught with the methamphetamines and the gun, Jones explained that he was attempting to avoid an individual who tried to fight him at the Valero. 

On Appeal

Attorney Santosh Aravind appealed Coy Jones' conviction based on these four key points:

1.The District Court erred by admitting evidence of Jones' prior conviction.

2. Testimony regarding the confidential informant (aka snitch) violated Jones' rights under the Confrontation Clause.

3. The District Court erred by not ordering disclosure of the identity of the confidential informant.

4, The evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict.

During the trial, as stated, Jones' attorney objected multiple times to the prosecutor's use of information from a snitch that was spoken to in court by a DEA agent. To determine whether the Sixth Amendment (Confrontation Clause) had been violated, the Fifth Circuit focused on the exchange of testimony between the prosecutor and DEA agent Royce Clayborne.

Prosecutor: "Based on the information you had received; Coy Jones received a large amount of methamphetamines."

Defense Attorney: "Objection hearsay."

Judge: "That objection is overruled."

Prosecutor: "Why did you follow Coy Jones as opposed to the other guy?"

Agent Clayborne: "Well, we knew Coy Jones had just received methamphetamines."

Clayborne further told the prosecutor that their purpose there forward was to stage a traffic stop of the vehicle driven by Coy Jones and arrest him. 

During cross-examination, defense attorney attacked Agent Clayborne's knowledge of whether Jones obtained meth from another person at the Valero.

Defense attorney: "[You] did not see any interaction between Mr. Jones and the person in the silver truck, right?"

Agent Clayborne: "That's correct."

Defense: "But you did not know that, right? You had not seen anything. You had not seen an exchange of methamphetamines or money."

Clayborne: "But I knew it was."

Defense: "You believed it, but you did not know it."

Realizing Clayborne's testimony created doubts as to whether he saw the drug deal go down between Jones and the other guy in the silver truck, the prosecutor took the agent on re-direct examination.

Prosecutor: "The defense confronted you about when you said you knew a drug deal had gone down, but that you had not seen anything; how did you know that a drug deal occurred?"

Clayborne: "Once we saw (other officers included) what looked like a drug deal; I made a phone call to my confidential source (the snitch) who got back to me -- and said the deal had happened."

Prosecutor: "Based on that information, you decided to stop Coy Jones?"

Clayborne: "That's correct."

Bottom Line

Coy Jones' case exemplifies how federal prosecutors flagrantly violate the law in drug cases. Here, prosecutors violated Jones' constitutional rights to a fair trial and to have the right to confront his accuser(s) in court. The accuser was a police informant who prosecutors failed to bring forward to testify about what he did or did not see. Prosecutors knew beforehand that they were bypassing the constitutional limits of the Confrontation Clause, which enshrines the use of the Sixth Amendment to confront accusers(s). The trial court judge was equally responsible for the reversal of Jones conviction because Jones trial lawyer made timely objections to the judge about the prosecutors not bringing forth the "drug informant" to testify to the jury of whether he saw Jones do a dope deal.

Trapped in the system, unable to make bail, Coy Jones was bullied into pleading guilty all over again to the same charges that the Fifth Circuit had reversed in his favor. A federal judge gave Jones only eight years this time around on November 1, 2019.

Jones attorney, Santosh Aravind told the Drug War Chronicle that "if the case would've been retried, then it's likely the government would have to bring in the actual informant to testify." Prosecutors had already figured they could win the case outright if the informant testified in open court during a new trial for Jones. 

Attorney Craig Washington viewed the situation differently. Washington said the new plea raises the possibility that Coy Jones pleaded guilty to crimes that amount to "Fruit of the Poisonous tree." Under this doctrine the law says that "if the evidential tree is tainted, so is its fruit.”

"Once the Fifth Circuit granted a new trial, prosecutors shouldn't have been able to use the same evidence that was overturned in the first place to get Coy Jones to plead guilty to it."

Prosecutors have not responded to the Drug War Chronicle’s inquiry about Washington’s allegations as of this writing.

Meanwhile inmate Coy Jones#63245-280 is serving his prison sentence at FCI in Three Rivers, Texas. Although his projected release date is in 2024, the word in the legal arena is that another round of appeals will hit the court by the end of this year or early 2021.

Drug War reporter Clarence Walker can be reached at: [email protected]

Book Review: Hell in the Heartland

Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller (2020, Berkley Books, (319 pp., $27.00 HB)

Early on the morning of December 31, 1999, a northeast Oklahoma couple headed to work in the predawn hours spotted a rosy glow on the rural horizon. The glow was turned out to be a mobile home in flames. It was home to Danny and Kathy Freeman and their teenage daughter Ashley, whose best friend, Lauria (not a typo) Bible, was spending the night.

Rural volunteer firefighters arrived to douse the flames of the now-collapsed trailer, followed shortly by a county sheriff's deputy -- and a crowd of curious neighbors gawking from the road. But when firefighters reported finding a body, but no sign of the presumed other three occupants of the home that night, the Craig County sheriff promptly bowed out of the case, handing it over to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI). That's because the Freemans had a serious beef with local law enforcement: A Craig County deputy had shot and killed 17-year-old Shane Freeman a year earlier, and now the sheriff feared Freeman had flipped, killing his wife and taking the girls hostage in his rage over his son's death.

And so begins journalist Jax Miller's Hell in the Heartland, a chilling bit of nasty prairie noir that explores an enduring mystery replete with still-missing girls, stunningly incompetent and possibly corrupt police, and a deeply criminal meth-cooking and -using subculture in the forgotten dead end towns and environmental cleanup sites of far northeast Oklahoma, where it butts up against Kansas and Missouri.

Were the local cops really scared of Freeman or, as relatives would later argue, had they eliminated a threat to them? Was the OSBI agent truly clueless -- as he comes off for years in the book -- or was something more sinister going on? In any case, both the deputies and the OSBI managed to miss the charred body of Danny Freeman in the ruins of the trailer, leaving them fruitlessly searching for their "suspect" in the critical first hours after the girls vanished and leaving family members searching the unsecured crime scene for clues to make the gruesome discovery themselves.

That was only the first in a years-long litany of police bungling or seeming indifference toward finding the killers of the Freeman couple and even more shockingly, finding the missing girls. Miller, who began working on the book in 2015, meticulously sifts through the evidence, pointing out misstep after police misstep. The years went by, rumors abounded, and in the meth subculture of the neighboring towns, whispers were heard of Polaroids and videos of bound and gagged girls and a New Year's Eve party where the captive teens were sexually abused and tortured before being murdered and their bodies thrown into one of the numberless pits that dotted the hellish landscape of Picher, Oklahoma, once a lead and zinc mining center, now a toxic wasteland of mineshafts and hills of mineral tailings that is now part of the Tar Creek Superfund site.

Miller shows how police on both sides of the Kansas-Oklahoma line heard those same whispers but failed to put two and two together. People in the meth subculture knew early on exactly who committed these atrocities, but when they said as much to law enforcement, nothing happened. For years. And while there were attempts to tell the cops, the incentive to keep quiet was strong, since those same killers were still around and scarier than ever.

It takes 18 years for Oklahoma authorities to announce an arrest in the case, with most of the legwork actually being done by the parents of the Bible girl, and just this month, one of the three men named as the killers, Ronny Busick, 69, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to accessory to murder. It is an unsatisfying denouement. The true mastermind of the murder, a maniacal meth-cooking preacher universally described as "evil" by everyone who knew him, died without meeting justice, as did the second henchman. And the girls have still not been found.

Miller excels at evoking the schizophrenic ambience of small-town pastoral rusticity mixed with bedraggled dead-enders cranked out of their heads, and she digs deep, interviewing dozens of people involved, from sheriffs and OSBI agents to current and former tweakers, family members, and townspeople. In those small towns, people know who is up to what, and Miller finds out, too.

Hell in the Heartland is true crime. It doesn't interrogate drug prohibition; it just accepts meth as a social problem. Nor does Miller talk about the history of meth in Oklahoma -- they may not have been smoking marijuana in Muskogee in the 1960s, but there was a trucker/cowboy speed culture tweaking in Tulsa -- or how harm reduction or other policy responses to an underground drug trade might have shaped a reality where teenaged girls don't get raped and murdered over drug deals gone bad. That's too bad, but she at least gets at the underlying social context. At one point, she writes how the good people of one nearby town "expected nothing but trouble from [those] boys, poor boys, boys of angry fathers and neglected mothers."

Hell in the Heartland is a compelling read, a horrifying mystery, still unsatifyingly unresolved. It's a real page-turner that sheds a very creepy light on that little corner of Oklahoma.

VT House Passes Marijuana Expungement, House Methamphetamine Emergency Bill Filed, More... (9/14/20)

Montana's marijuana legalizers are now facing organized opposition, House members have filed a law enforcement-supported meth bill, and more.

Bills seeking to declare a national methamphetamine emergency have been filed in both the House and Senate. (DEA.gov)
Marijuana Policy

Montana Marijuana Legalization Initiatives Draw Organized Opposition. The Initiative 190 marijuana legalization initiative and its companion Constitutional Initiative 118 have finally drawn organized opposition. A group calling itself Wrong for Montana formed last week to focus on the "societal ills" of the substance, and the Montana Contractors Association, a builders' group, which opposes the initiatives, said it would help finance the group's efforts.

Vermont House Votes to Approve Marijuana Expungements by Wide Margin. The House last Friday voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would automatically expunge thousands of low-level marijuana convictions and double the amount of marijuana that people can grow and possess. The moves were included in a miscellaneous Judiciary Committee bill that still needs final action this week before heading to the Senate, which passed a similar bill in May.

Methamphetamine

New Bipartisan House Bill Would Declare Meth an Emerging Drug Menace. Following in the steps of the Senate, where Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) filed an identical bill last month, a bipartisan handful of House members last Friday filed the Methamphetamine Response Act, a bill that would declare methamphetamine an emerging drug threat and would require the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop, implement and make public a national plan to prevent methamphetamine addiction and overdoses from becoming a crisis. The bill would require the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP—the drug czar's office) "to develop, implement, and make public, within 90 days of enactment, a national emerging threats response plan that is specific to methamphetamine." The bill is supported by the Fraternal Order of Police, HIDTA Director’s Association, The Sergeant’s Benevolent Association, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), and The National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), and the National Criminal Justice Association.

Mass Murder at Illicit CA Marijuana Grow, Meth & Other Drug Use Up Amidst Pandemic, More... (9/9/20)

Maine finally issues its first adult-use marijuana business licenses, a mass killing at an illegal California marijuana grow leaves seven dead, and more.

Meth and other drug us is up during the pandemic, a testing lab company reports. (Warner Robbins, GA, PD)
Marijuana Policy

Seven Killed at Illicit California Marijuana Grow. Seven people were shot and killed over the weekend at an illegal marijuana grow outside the Riverside County town of Aguanga. Investigating authorities seized more than a thousand pounds of processed marijuana and hundreds of marijuana plants. The property had facilities to process that raw marijuana into high-THC cannabis oil. All of the victims were of Laotian descent.

Maine Issues First Active Licenses for Legal Marijuana Shops. The state Office of Marijuana Policy on Tuesday issued the first active licenses for recreational marijuana businesses, bringing the state one step nearer to actually allowing sales nearly four years after voters approved marijuana legalization in November 2016. Authorities issued three licenses for cultivation facilities, two for marijuana retail outlets, and one for a testing facility.

Methamphetamine

Meth Use Rose During Early Days of COVID Pandemic, Lab Report Finds. The drug testing laboratory firm Millennium Health reports that urine samples from across the US came back positive at a rate 20% higher in the early weeks of the pandemic compared to the same period before the pandemic began ratcheting up in early March. The increase was particularly dramatic in some states, with meth positives increasing two-fold in Nevada and nearly as much in Mississippi. The lab also reported increases in use of other drugs, such as fentanyl. "All US census divisions had a significant increase in adjusted UDT positivity rate for at least one drug, except the South Atlantic and West North Central. Notably, the East North Central and the East South Central had significant positivity rate increases for all four drugs. The West North Central saw significant decreases in positivity rates for all four drugs," the report said.

DC Natural Psychedelic Initiative Qualifies, DPA Federal Drug Decrim Push, More... (8/10/20)

Residents in the nation's capital will vote on whether to effectively decriminalize natural psychedelics, the Arizona pot legalization initiative survives a legal challenge, the Drug Policy Alliance pushes for federal drug decriminalization, and more.

Decriminalize Nature DC street signs
Marijuana Policy

Arizona Marijuana Legalization Initiative Fends Off Legal Challenge. The Smart and Safe Arizona marijuana legalization initiative has survived a legal challenge from foes. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James Smith ruled late Friday that the measure's summary did not mislead voters and the measure can be on the ballot. "At 100 words, the summary also cannot include everything," he wrote. "That is why the full initiative must accompany the petition. This initiative is plain: It wants to legalize recreational marijuana," the judge wrote. "That is the principal provision. It is unlikely electors signing these petitions would be surprised by cascading effects of legalizing a formerly illegal substance."

Drug Policy

Drug Policy Alliance Proposes Federal All-Drug Decriminalization, Releases New Legislative Framework. The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) released a new federal legislative proposal Dismantling the Federal Drug War: A Comprehensive Drug Decriminalization Framework, which provides a roadmap to effectively end the criminalization of people who use drugs and begin repairing the harm drug law enforcement has caused to communities of color. The DPA model decriminalization legislation -- the Drug Policy Reform Act -- takes the first steps in dismantling the punitive apparatus built up over the past 50 years. To begin refocusing federal drug policies, the legislation shifts the authority for classifying and regulating controlled substances from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The legislation eliminates criminal penalties for all possession of personal-use quantities of controlled substances, and shifts federal resources away from futile enforcement strategies to supportive initiatives to protect the public health and safety.

Methamphetamine

Senators Feinstein and Grassley File Methamphetamine Response Act. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) last Thursday introduced the Methamphetamine Response Act, a bill declaring methamphetamine an emerging drug threat which would require the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop, implement and make public a national plan to prevent methamphetamine addiction and overdoses from becoming a crisis.

Psychedelics

Washington, DC, Natural Psychedelics Initiative Qualifies for the Ballot. The DC Board of Elections announced last Wednesday that Initiative 81, the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020, has qualified for the November ballot. The act would effectively decriminalize the use and possession of natural psychedelics by making the enforcement of laws against them the lowest priority.

International

World Anti-Doping Association to Shorten Punishments for Recreational Drug Offenses. Beginning next January, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will no longer issue long suspensions for athletes testing positive for recreational drugs out of competition. Instead of being banned for two years, the athletes will now be banned for one to three months. "If the athlete can establish that any ingestion or use occurred out of competition and was unrelated to sport performance, then the period of ineligibility shall be three months," WADA's new code says. "In addition, the period of ineligibility calculated... may be reduced to one month if the athlete or other person satisfactorily completes a substance of abuse treatment program approved by the Anti-Doping Organization."

British Tory Drug Reform Group Calls for Rescheduling Psilocybin. The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) has published a new report with the Adam Smith Institute outlining the potential medical benefits of psilocybin and urging the UK Home Office to reschedule the compound for research purposes. The not-for-profit group also urges the Home Office to reduce regulatory restrictions on the compound to allow for research into its medical efficacy. The report is Medicinal use of psilocybin: Reducing restrictions on research and treatment.

Colombia's Former President Uribe Placed on House Arrest During Investigation of Ties to Drug Cartels, Paramilitary Groups. Last Thursday, President Ivan Duque announced that former President Alvaro Uribe will be held in custody as the Supreme Court investigates allegations of witness tampering. Uribe, president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010, has long been accused of criminal activities, including having ties to drug cartels and paramilitary groups. He is currently accused of being a founding member of a rightist paramilitary group involved in the decades-long conflict between the government and leftist rebels.

The Drug Policy Alliance is a funder of StoptheDrugWar.org.

MO Pot Legalization Campaign Falls Victim to COVID-19, Border Smugglers Have to Innovate, More... (4/16/20)

The Show Me State won't be able to show us legal weed this year, the DEA says meth and heroin prices are going up, and more. 

How the US-Mexico border used to look. Now, reduced traffic because of COVID-19 is forcing drug smugglers to innovate. (CC)
Marijuana Policy

Missouri Legalization Campaign Killed by Coronavirus. The marijuana legalization initiative sponsored by Missourians for a New Approach is no more. While activists with the campaign had sought alternative avenues for signature gathering, they have now conceded that is impossible. The campaign needed more than 160,000 valid voter signatures and only has 80,000 raw signatures now.

Law Enforcement

DEA Says Meth, Heroin Prices Going Up. Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in the San Antonio district, says meth and heroin prices are going up even though there's been no let up in drug trafficking across the border. "We have seen an increase in the price of narcotics domestically. Now does that mean there’s a shortage of the narcotics here, that could be an indicator of that. Could it also be price gouging by some of the traffickers? It could be that, also using the virus as an excuse," said Sorianello.

Reduced Border Traffic Forcing Cartels to Innovate. Mexican drug cartels are sitting on large stockpiles of synthetic drugs, but international travel restrictions have greatly reduced traffic at border ports of entry, allowing Customs and Border Patrol officers more time to search vehicles for drugs, which in turn is leading to large seizures and forcing drug traffickers to innovate, mainly by returning to old smuggling tactics, such as sending drug mules across the desert or having them swim across the Rio Grande River, Customs and Border Patrol says.

Mexico Illicit Drug Prices Rising, OR Regulators Allow Curbside Pot Sales, More... (3/24/20)

States grapple with marijuana sales during a time of crisis, Ghana legalizes hemp and CBD, Mexican traffickers facing chemical shortages are raising prices, and more.

Meth and fentanyl from Mexico are about to get more expensive thanks to the coronavirus crisis. (Warner Robbins, GA, PD)
Marijuana Policy

Massachusetts Governor Shutters Recreational Pot Shops, Lets Medical Marijuana Outlets Remain Open. Gov. Charlie Baker (R) has ordered recreational marijuana outlets to close during the coronavirus crisis but has spared medical marijuana dispensaries. The emergency order issued Monday closed all non-essential businesses in the state for at least two weeks. Dispensaries are considered essential; recreational pot shops are not.

Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative Rejected for Lack of Signatures. State Attorney General Dave Yost on Monday announced he has rejected a petition for a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana because petitioners did not submit the minimum number of valid signatures required. This was a first step; organizers needed to submit summary language of their amendment along with at least 1,000 valid voter signatures. They didn't do that. "Of the 1,000 minimum signatures required to proceed with the constitutional amendment, those boards of elections reported receiving a total of only 271 valid signatures," Yost said. "Finally, because the petition failed to meet the signature threshold, I have not made any determination concerning the fairness and truthfulness of the proposed summary."

Oregon Regulators Approve Curbside Recreational Marijuana Sales. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which also regulates marijuana, has approved a temporary rule allowing recreational marijuana retailers to sell their products curbside. The rule permits retailers to take orders and deliver marijuana to a customer who is outside and within 150 feet of the licensed premises. The sales can take place only during normal business hours, no earlier than 7:00am and no later than 10:00pm.

Medical Marijuana

Pennsylvania Regulators Ease Medical Marijuana Rules Because of Coronavirus. State regulators trying to ensure that patients continue to have access to medical marijuana have removed a cap on the number of patients caregivers can serve and eliminated background checks for caregiver renewal applications. Curbside pickup has also been okayed, as have remote consultations for some practitioners.

International

Ghana Legalizes Hemp, CBD. The parliament has passed a bill legalizing the production of industrial hemp and its use for medicinal as well as commercial purposes. The bill also expands access to drug treatment and medical care and marks a shift from treating addiction as a legal issue to a public health issue.

Mexican Meth, Fentanyl Traffickers Raise Prices Amid Shortages of Precursor Chemicals. With supplies of Chinese precursor chemicals running low because of disruptions related to the coronavirus pandemic, Mexican drug traffickers are raising wholesale illicit drug prices. The Sinaloa Cartel is reportedly increasing the wholesale price of a pound of meth from $100 to $600. The price of fentanyl is also going up, although not yet as dramatically. Wholesale prices for a pound have reportedly increased from $35,000 to $42,000.

Two Takes on the Global Drug War and Global Drug Cultures [FEATURE]

America shows signs of emerging from the century-long shadow of drug prohibition, with marijuana leading the way and a psychedelic decriminalization movement rapidly gaining steam. It also seems as if the mass incarceration fever driven by the war on drugs has finally broken, although tens if not hundreds of thousands remain behind bars on drug charges.

As Americans, we are remarkably parochial. We are, we still like to tell ourselves, "the world's only superpower," and we can go about our affairs without overly concerning ourselves about what's going on beyond our borders. But what America does, what America wants and what America demands has impacts far beyond our borders, and the American prohibitionist impulse is no different.

Thanks largely (but not entirely) to a century of American diplomatic pressure, the entire planet has been subsumed by our prohibitionist impulse. A series of United Nations conventions, the legal backbone of global drug prohibition, pushed by the US, have put the whole world on lockdown.

We here in the drug war homeland remain largely oblivious to the consequences of our drug policies overseas, whether it's murderous drug cartels in Mexico, murderous cops in the Philippines, barbarous forced drug treatment regimes in Russia and Southeast Asia, exemplary executions in China, or corrupted cops and politicians everywhere. But now, a couple of non-American journalists working independently have produced a pair of volumes that focus on the global drug war like a US Customs X-ray peering deep inside a cargo container. Taken together, the results are illuminating, and the light they shed reveals some very disturbing facts.

Dopeworld by Niko Vorobyov and Pills, Powder, and Smoke by Antony Loewenstein both attempt the same feat -- a global portrait of the war on drugs -- and both reach the same conclusion -- that drug prohibition benefits only drug traffickers, fearmongering politicians, and state security apparatuses -- but are miles apart attitudinally and literarily. This makes for two very different, but complementary, books on the same topic.

Loewenstein, an Australian who previously authored Disaster Capitalism and Profits of Doom, is -- duh -- a critic of capitalism who situates the global drug war within an American project of neo-imperial subjugation globally and control over minority populations domestically. His work is solid investigative reporting, leavened with the passion he feels for his subject.

In Pills, Powder, and Smoke, he visits places that rarely make the news but are deeply and negatively impacted by the US-led war on drugs, such as Honduras. Loewenstein opens that chapter with the murder of environmental activist Berta Caceres, which was not directly related to the drug war, but which illustrates the thuggish nature of the Honduran regime -- a regime that emerged after a 2009 coup overthrew the leftist president, a coup justified by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and which has received millions in US anti-drug assistance, mainly in the form of weapons and military equipment.

Honduras doesn't produce any drugs; it's only an accident of geography and the American war on drugs that we even mention the country in the context of global drug prohibition. Back in the 1980s, the administration of Bush the Elder cracked down on cocaine smuggling in the Caribbean, and as traffickers sought to evade that threat, Honduras was perfectly placed to act as a trampoline for cocaine shipments taking an alternative route through Mexico, which incidentally fueled the rise of today's deadly and uber-wealthy Mexican drug cartels.

The drug trade, combined with grinding poverty, huge income inequalities, and few opportunities, has helped turn Honduras into one of the deadliest places on earth, where the police and military kill with impunity, and so do the country's teeming criminal gangs. Loewenstein walks those mean streets -- except for a few neighborhoods even his local fixers deem too dangerous -- talking to activists, human rights workers, the family members of victims, community members, and local journalists to paint a chilling picture. (This is why Hondurans make up a large proportion of those human caravans streaming north to the US border. But unlike Venezuela, where mass flight in the face of violence and economic collapse is routinely condemned as a failure of socialism, you rarely hear any commentators calling the Honduran exodus a failure of capitalism.)

He reexamines one of the DEA's most deadly recent incidents, where four poor, innocent Hondurans were killed by Honduran troops working under DEA supervision in a raid whose parameters were covered up for years by the agency. Loewenstein engaged in extended communication with the DEA agent in charge, as well as with survivors and family members of those killed. Those people report they have never received an apology, not to mention compensation, from the Honduran military -- or from the United States. While the Honduran military fights the drug war with US dollars, Loewenstein shows it and other organs of the Honduran government are also deeply implicated in managing the drug traffic. And news headlines bring his story up to date: Just this month, the current, rightist president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, of meeting with and taking a bribe from a drug trafficker. This comes after his brother, former Honduran Senator Juan Antonio Hernández, was convicted of running tons of cocaine into the United States in a trial that laid bare the bribery, corruption, and complicity of high-level Hondurans in the drug trade, including the president.

Loewenstein also takes us to Guinea-Bissau, a West African country where 70 percent of the population subsists on less than $2 a day and whose biggest export is cashews. Or at least it was cashews. Since the early years of this century, the country has emerged as a leading destination for South American cocaine, which is then re-exported to the insatiable European market.

Plagued by decades of military coups and political instability, the country has never developed, and an Atlantic shoreline suited for mass tourism now serves mainly as a convenient destination for boatloads and planeloads of cocaine. Loewenstein visits hotels whose only clients are drug traffickers and remote fishing villages where the trade is an open secret and a source of jobs. He talks with security officials who frankly admit they have almost no resources to combat the trade, and he traces the route onward to Europe, sometimes carried by Islamic militants.

He also tells the tale of one exemplary drug bust carried out by a DEA SWAT team arguably in Guinean territorial waters that snapped up the country's former Navy minister. The DEA said he was involved in a "narco-terrorist" plot to handle cocaine shipments for Colombia's leftist FARC guerillas, who were designated as "terrorists" by the administration of Bush the Junior in a politically convenient melding of the wars on drugs and terror.

It turns out, though, there were no coke loads, and there was no FARC; there was only a DEA sting operation, with the conspiracy created out of whole cloth. While the case made for some nice headlines and showed the US hard at work fighting drugs, it had no demonstrable impact on the use of West Africa as a cocaine conduit, and it raised serious questions about the degree to which the US can impose its drug war anywhere it chooses.

Loewenstein also writes about Australia, England, and the United States, in each case setting the historical and political context, talking to all kinds of people, and laying bare the hideous cruelties of drug policies that exert their most terrible tolls on the poor and racial minorities. But he also sees glimmers of hope in things such as the movement toward marijuana legalization here and the spread of harm reduction measures in England and Australia.

He gets one niggling thing wrong, though, in his chapter on the US. He converses with Washington, DC, pot activists Alan Amsterdam and Adam Eidinger, the main movers behind DC's successful legalization initiative, but in his reporting on it, he repeatedly refers to DC as a state and once even mistakenly cites a legal marijuana sales figure from Washington state. (There are no legal sales in DC.) Yes, this is a tiny matter, but c'mon, Loewenstein is Australian, and he should know a political entity similar to Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory.

That quibble aside, Loewenstein has made a hardheaded but openhearted contribution to our understanding of the multifaceted malevolence of the never-ending war on drugs. And I didn't even mention his chapter on the Philippines. It's in there, it's as gruesome as you might expect, and it's very chilling reading.

Vorobyov, on the other hand, was born in Russia and emigrated to England as a child. He reached adulthood as a recreational drug user and seller -- until he was arrested on the London Underground and got a two-year sentence for carrying enough Ecstasy to merit a charge of possession with intent to distribute. After that interval, which he says inspired him to write his book, he got his university degree and moved back to Russia, where he picked up a gig at Russia Today before turning his talents to Dopeworld.

Dopeworld is not staid journalism. Instead, it is a twitchy mish-mash, jumping from topic to topic and continent to continent with the flip of a page, tracing the history of alcohol prohibition in the US at one turn, chatting up Japanese drug gangsters at the next, and getting hammered by ayahuasca in yet another. Vorobyov himself describes Dopeworld as "true crime, gonzo, social, historical memoir meets fucked up travel book."

Indeed. He relates his college-boy drug-dealing career with considerable panache. He parties with nihilistic middle-class young people and an opium-smoking cop in Tehran, he cops $7 grams of cocaine in Colombia and tours Pablo Escobar's house with the dead kingpin's brother as a tour guide, he has dinner with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's family in Mexico's Sinaloa state and pronounces them nice people ("really chill"), and he meets up with a vigilante killer in Manila.

Vorobyov openly says the unsayable when it comes to writing about the drug war and drug prohibition: Drugs can be fun! While Loewenstein is pretty much all about the victims, Vorobyov inhabits the global drug culture. You know: Dopeworld. Loewenstein would bemoan the utter futility of a record-breaking seizure of a 12-ton load of cocaine; Vorobyov laments, "that's 12 tons of cocaine that will never be snorted."

Vorobyov is entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and he brings a former dope dealer's perspective to bear. He's brash and breezy, but like Loewenstein, he's done his homework as well as his journalistic fieldwork, and the result is fascinating. To begin to understand what the war on drugs has done to people and countries around the planet, this pair of books makes an essential introduction. And two gripping reads.

Dopeworld: Adventures in the Global Drug Trade by Niko Vorobyov (August 2020, St. Martin's Press, hardcover, 432 pp., $29.99)

Pills, Powder, and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs by Antony Loewenstein (November 2019, Scribe, paperback, 368 pp., $19.00)

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