After five longs days incommunicado in darkest Dakota, I am crawling out of my cave and heading for the East Coast to check out the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) conference this weekend in Washington. It takes a lot to draw this High Plains drifter to the big city, but the SSDP conference looks to be worth it. First of all, it's always a gas to see the latest generation of drug reformers emerging, and what better place than a conference designed to pull in student activists from across the country. I've been fighting the good fight for drug reform for years, but I never cease to be amazed at the new energy and new ideas that are always bubbling up from the kids. I'm sure they're going to teach me something again this year. It doesn’t hurt either that the conference has an all-star roster of speakers and presenters including not only numerous drug reform luminaries, but also media figures like political commentator Bill Press of MSNBC and widely syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. But I especially look forward to seeing some of my fellow toilers in the trenches of drug war journalism; folks whose work I look up to like Reason Magazine's Radley Balko and Pete Guither of the Drug War Rant. And, well, shucks, those nice kids at SSDP have also invited to join one of their panels, "International Affairs: Drug Policy at the Global Level," so I thought I better take them up on that offer. I'll be talking about Afghanistan. Come check it out—not just my panel, but the conference as a whole. The SSDP web site has a complete program guide. I'll see you there.

In New Mexico, total panic erupted after three Burger King employees served pot-laced burgers to police. The men are getting charged with felony assault on police officers, the officers are suing Burger King, and their attorney is calling the suspects “hoodlums” in the newspaper. No doubt these “hoodlums” will get the full treatment.

Meanwhile, in New York, a judge has recommended the reinstatement of a police officer who failed a drug test for marijuana. It turns out the officer’s wife admitted serving him spiked meatballs in the hopes of ending his dangerous career in law-enforcement.

Leaving aside the question of whether the "I got drugged" excuse would work for anyone other than a cop, you gotta wonder what’s gonna happen to the wife. My guess is that she gets in considerably less trouble than the Burger King Three. In fact, my money says she doesn’t even get charged.

Either way, I hope we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about why you shouldn’t drug people against their will. It’s a waste of resources. Otherwise useful resources.

...because I might smoke something of which they don't approve. Imprisoning people for drug use or possession is a violation of fundamental human rights, and I don't give a rat's ass what the law says. The US government and the governments of all the states are committing massive human rights violations with their drugs policies, and those Good Germans who allow it to continue are complicit. I try to be understanding of police, prosecutors, and judges. When they throw some guy in jail or prison because he uses the wrong substance, they're only doing their jobs, right? Sorry, I can't cut them any slack anymore. This country has HALF A MILLION people behind bars who didn't do anything to anybody. That's a goddamned crime. And all those criminal justice system professionals, from the cop on the beat to the judge on the bench, are guilty. When do we get our drug war Nuremburg? "Unjust laws exist," 19th century American Transcendentalist proto-hippie Henry David Thoreau once famously noted. "Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we succeed, or shall we transgress them at once?" We know by his actions how Thoreau answered that question. He went to jail rather than pay taxes to support the US war against Mexico. I'm with him. I'm Phil Smith, and I wrote this message in solidarity with all the prisoners of the drug war. I'm with you, too, guys. I won't be blogging for a few days. I've got other things to do. I'll be thinking of what on earth we can possibly do to end this situation.

That’s right possession. Via The Agitator, the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey has gone crazy, drug war style. They’re cracking down on prescription drug abuse, primarily by indiscriminately confiscating automobiles from all sorts of people, including a cop.

From dailyrecord.com:

Parent Gerard Trapp, a Bloomfield police officer, said the seizure of three family cars is extreme, since neither he nor his wife knew of any alleged drug use by their son, and Trapp Jr. was charged with a relatively minor offense. He was never accused of being a dealer or supplier.

This sort of mind-numbing injustice comes naturally to many local-level drug warriors. I’m shocked, but only sort of, having been recently shocked over and over again by equally horrible tales of forfeiture abuse.

The Trapp family’s lawyer calls it extortion, probably because of this:

The prosecutor's office seized in July the family's 1992 Cadillac SDV, a 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and a 1994 Toyota Camry. Trapp said the prosecutor's office initially told him the three cars could be bought back for $3,000 and have since lowered the amount to $1,500 for all three vehicles. But the Trapps have not bought back their own vehicles.

Good for them. Most people would just cut their losses and get those cars back before they end up in the prosecutor’s garage. But apparently, the Trapps found their son’s minor indiscretion an insufficient justification for having police confiscate their property and demand cash for its return.

Alas, forfeiture thuggery and unscrupulous profiteering just go with the territory. Only by ending the drug war in its entirety can we do away with the daily injustices that too many Americans take for granted.

The three most important drug reform initiatives have failed today. Question 7 to legalize marijuana in Nevada lost 56-44. Amendment 44 to legalize marijuana in Colorado lost 60-40. And Initiative 4 to protect medical marijuana patients in South Dakota lost 53-47.

I was optimistic, particularly about South Dakota, but overall, tonight’s outcome is more disappointing than surprising. Legalizing marijuana by popular vote is a huge challenge, and while it hurts to lose, these are necessary steps in order to move the discussion forward.

And it’s exciting to see so many votes for reform. Surely, marijuana prohibition is the only criminal law that’s opposed by such a large segment of the population. Even in defeat, the results in Nevada and Colorado show that an eventual victory on this issue is clearly within striking distance.

Onward.

Rep. Earnest Istook (R-OK) went down hard tonight in the Oklahoma Governor’s race.

Istook was the author of the ridiculous "Istook Amendment" which banned transit authorities from selling ad space to drug reformers and was quickly shot down by a federal judge in a no-brainer first amendment ruling.

Istook vacated his seat in the House to run for Governor, so it looks like he’ll now have plenty of time on his hands to re-familiarize himself with the Bill of Rights.

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

 

There’s one less bag of meth on the street thanks to Rev. Ted Haggard, who apparently enjoys buying the drug and then throwing it away. Of course if Haggard’s partial confession is true, he at least helped fund the speed-dealing gay prostitute industry, and everyone knows those guys hate freedom.

On Chris Matthews Sunday morning, Andrew Sullivan suggested that the evangelical community might want to take a step back from power politics and do some soul-searching. That’s one option, but for Colorado’s most demoralized evangelicals, let me recommend legalizing marijuana. Hey, at least it’s not meth.

Drug warriors such as Andrea Barthwell and David Murray have argued strenuously that cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals such as Marinol and Sativex are completely different from marijuana. They’ve bristled at Rob Kampia’s claims that Sativex is "liquid marijuana" and they’ve long used the availability of Marinol as an excuse to arrest patients who prefer cultivated marijuana instead.

Whether extracted or synthesized, THC-based medicines don’t include anything not present in the plant itself, so it’s ludicrous to argue that one can be medicinal and the other can’t. Yet they’ve done exactly that. Afterall, if this stuff is medicine, it sure as hell isn’t marijuana.

Thus I was rather surprised to come across this Google ad:

The link goes directly to the official Marinol website, sponsored by Solvay Pharmaceuticals. So while Barthwell is saying the stuff ain’t pot, Solvay is marketing their product as "legal marijuana."

Moreover, since Google ads are designed to offer products relevant to the web page on which they appear, Solvay’s ads target anyone interested in marijuana. Structured as such, this ad campaign will reach many recreational users and encourage them to become patients. I’m not saying that’s what they’re trying to do, but it's unusual to see a pharmaceutical company boasting that its product is legal.

Let’s assume Solvay is merely trying to inform the public that one needn’t break the law in order to enjoy the widely recognized medical benefits of marijuana. It’s perfectly understandable, and very smart from a marketing perspective. Afterall, if I had to choose between nausea medications, I’d pick the one that lists "exaggerated happiness" as a possible side effect.

The fun part is that by calling Marinol "legal marijuana", Solvay is basically mocking the very people who helped them get Schedule III approval in the first place. And they’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. Aggressively marketing Marinol at this time makes sense with Sativex on the horizon.

Ultimately, the drug warriors’ goal of distinguishing cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals from the plant itself could prove a lost cause. Marijuana is popular among patients and a large segment of the general population. Claiming that these pharmaceuticals are totally different from marijuana may suit hardcore drug warriors trying to save face, but it’s not smart if you’re trying to win over patients who like marijuana or prospective patients who’ve heard good things about it. You’re better off saying your product is similar but legal and more potent.

So if Solvay Pharmaceuticals refers to its medicine as marijuana, and patients refer to their marijuana as medicine, it seems everyone’s on the same page except Barthwell and Murray.

Tensions over Amendment 44 in Colorado have reached a fever pitch as self-appointed marijuana experts continue to emerge with absurb predictions.

From TheDenverChannel.com:

A rally at the state Capitol on Friday morning turned into a shouting match between the groups for and against a proposed amendment that would legalize small amounts of marijuana in Colorado.

Gov. Bill Owens and the state's top law enforcement officers planned a press event on the west steps of the Capitol to urge voters to turn down Amendment 44, which would legalize adult possession of one ounce of marijuana.

Supporters of pot legalization tried to shout them down.

If Governor Owens is gonna say stuff like this, I can’t say I blame them:

"In addition to human costs, legalizing marijuana is sure to have an economic impact on every Colorado citizen. These costs include increased costs for substance abuse treatment and other social programs as well as lost revenue due to decreased worker productivity.”

Once again, legalizing marijuana won’t increase treatment costs. It will reduce them dramatically. Most people in marijuana treatment are enrolled against their will following an arrest, which won’t happen anymore if Amendment 44 passes.

As for decreased worker productivity, show me some data and we’ll talk. If the government had the guts to actually study this, they’d find that marijuana users who haven’t been hung out to dry by the criminal justice system are just as productive and successful as non-users; probably far more so than heavy drinkers. The data would then be buried and brought up only by us.

Next they gave the microphone to Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener:

Wegener, who is the president of the County Sheriffs of Colorado, said, "We are also concerned that legalizing marijuana will cause a spike in impaired driving fatalities and injuries caused by more motorists driving impaired on marijuana. The reality also exists that it is more difficult for law enforcement to detect impairment caused by marijuana and other drugs as compared to alcohol."

Clearly something’s got to be done about these mischievous stoners who are too sober to fail a sobriety test.

This is getting ridiculous. Is it so crazy that we want to try something different? We’re asking to step back from a policy that’s done nothing but piss people off for 70 years and these guys start giving prophesies of a great plague. What do they know?

No, not the Colombian cartels and not the Mexican cartels. Last week, law enforcement officials in two different federal drug cases on different ends of the country used the word "cartel" to describe local drug trafficking organizations. I'm not aware of previous usages of the word to describe such domestic groups, and I have to wonder if we're not seeing the orchestrated emergence of new meme from the drug warriors. In the context of the drug war, "cartel" certainly is a scary word, calling up images of Colombian "narcoguerrillas" (another term of propaganda) and Mexican mobsters, not to mention the subliminal image of swarthy Arabs stinking of petroleum. It is also an incorrect word. If you look up "cartel" in the dictionary, you get a definition along the lines of "a combination of independent business organizations formed to regulate production, pricing, and marketing of goods by the members." That is an apt description of OPEC, the organization of oil-exporting countries, whose members meet to set production quotas in an open bid to keep prices where they want them. It may also be an apt description of the big oil companies, although they would naturally swear there is no collusion among them. In American history, we have had experience with "cartels," but we called them "trusts" and we went after them as "trust-busters" back in the days when our government wasn't owned by corporate interests. But calling the Mexican drug trafficking organizations "cartels" is simply wrong. The "Gulf Cartel" does not cooperate with the "Juarez Cartel;" instead, the competing organizations are locked in a bloody war for domination of the illicit drug trade. Similarly, the "Medillin Cartel" and the "Cali Cartel," former Colombian drug trafficking organizations did not seek to limit cocaine production, nor did they act in collusion with other producers and traffickers except within their own organizations. If it is arguably incorrect to refer to major Latin American trafficking organizations as "cartels," it is just silly to use the term to refer to relatively small-time, local drug trafficking organizations. But that's what officials did in Colorado and Pennsylvania last week. In Denver, DEA special agent in charge Jeffrey Sweetin gets the credit for using the term to describe a methamphetamine trafficking ring bringing speed to the Front Range. All Headline News ran a story on the bust titled "Feds Bust Major Colorado Cartel" with this lead sentence: "A 13-month-long investigation has dismantled what Jeffrey D. Sweetin, special agent in with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Rocky Mountain division says, is a major drug cartel, headquartered in Greeley." This "cartel" consisted of 21 people, 12 of whom the story noted were "illegal." But despite the rhetorical effort, the story explains that the group was trying to corner the market, not collude with its competitors. The Pennsylvania "cartel" is even less compelling. A federal grand jury there indicted eight people—mostly members of one family—for trafficking crack and heroin into Johnstown. One media outlet, WJAC-TV, led its report thusly: "Eight members of a drug cartel called the 'Philly Mob' have been indicted by a federal grand jury on drug charges.'. The culprit in this case appears to be former Johnstown District Attorney David Tulowitz, who was quoted in a Johnstown Tribune-Democrat story as saying the Philly Mob was "the most violent group operating in the city since the Jamaican cartel was broken up in the early 1990s." When I first saw this pair of stories with "cartel" pop up, I suspected a Justice Department cabal might be behind it, but I have yet to see any evidence of that. Federal prosecutors' press releases didn’t use the word. Still, it seems odd that widely-separated law enforcement officials would misuse the term in the same deliberate fashion within a few days of each other. Let's keep an eye out for further abuses of the English language when it comes to describing drug trafficking organizations. The scarier the better, eh?

Sam Smith's Progressive Review summarizes the beguiling story http://prorev.com/2006/10/fading-days-of-asa-hutchinson.htm of Barry Seal, a major cocaine smuggler who operated undisturbed in Mena, Arkansas while Asa Hutchinson was the Republican United States Attorney and Bill "Vacuum Cleaner Nose" Clinton was Governor. Today Asa Hutchinson is running for Governor of Arkansas http://www.asaforgovernor.org/. Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) is ahead by 13 points 51 - 38, in a poll conducted by the University of Arkansas published today. Hutchinson is running on his record as a Member of Congress -- helping to impeach Bill Clinton, Administrator of the DEA, and Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security of the Department of Homeland Security. The New York Times had a great story about how once Hutchinson went to Homeland Security, his brother, a former U.S. Senator was now looking for contracts from DHS for his law firm's clients. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E13FA3B5B0C708DDDAC08... Look hard for much substance in that record. Hutchinson never seemed to understand the mission of DEA. He wrote a major defense of the drug war for the Washington Post http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1890/a04.html?274086 arguing that the proof of DEA's success was that the number of drug users has gone down. Naturally he had to draw a comparison to 1979, for drug use had grown dramatically since George Bush the first was president -- from about 12 million to 16 million users -- now the total is almost 20 million current users. Stop the Drug War readers will enjoy Sam Smith's review of the numerous botched investigational steps by Hutchinson when one of the biggest cocaine smugglers in the nation's history was operating under his nose.

President Bush never tires of spending our tax dollars losing not winning various wars. Now he wants to give Colombia another $600 million International Herald Tribune reports.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns calls it a strategy adjustment:

"In any counterterrorism or counter-narcotics campaign you sometimes have to adjust strategy to be effective as conditions change," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters in Bogota, announcing the White House was seeking to maintain current levels of support for its caretaker in the war on drugs through 2008. "We'll be open to any suggestions the Colombian government makes."

I think what he meant to say was that we refuse to adjust our strategy and we’re not open to suggestions. And what does he mean "as conditions change"? Nothing's changed since Plan Colombia began eight years ago . That’s the problem.

Meanwhile the police we trained with the last $600 million are getting killed systematically. Sound familiar?