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Another (unarmed) Casualty of the Drug Warriors
Wanted man was unarmed when shot It wasn't even 'real' cops that did the shooting. Des Moines Police Sgt. Vince Valdez said the shooting involved the U.S. Marshal Service Violent Fugitive Task Force and a warrant team of the Fifth Judicial District of the Iowa Department of Correctional Services.
Police Admit Humiliation After 4/20 Celebration at UC Santa Cruz
As I noted earlier, the meteoric rise of the 4/20 marijuana holiday into a national phenomenon is really something to behold. While some may flinch at the spectacle of widespread open consumption, there's a message here about the unity of marijuana culture in America and the futility of criminalizing so many people.Just look at the reaction of law-enforcement:SANTA CRUZ -- For those who arrest people who use, abuse or sell drugs, Sunday's pot-smoking festival at UC Santa Cruz was "a moral slap in the face to the cause," said Rich Westphal, task force commander with the Santa Cruz County Narcotics Enforcement Team. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]Here's how it went down: Police may find all of this embarrassing, but it's not really their fault. Marijuana shouldn't be illegal. Any law targeting this many Americans is just flawed on its face. These gratuitous events are a symptom of the bunker mentality of our marijuana culture, which now erupts into a public free-for-all every year on April 20.It is marijuana prohibition that glamorizes these events and makes them fun. That is just a fact, and one which shouldn't be lost on law-enforcement. These are anti-prohibition pot riots and they are the safest riots you'll ever find. You'd have to call the national guard if any other type of criminal gathered in such numbers.So if you can't catch them all on the highways or in their homes, and you can't even catch them when they're all together in one place, maybe it's time to stop trying to catch them.
European Pressure: Turkey Must Fight Drug War, or Else
EDITOR'S NOTE: Kalif Mathieu is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.I traveled to the city of Istanbul last week to stay for a few days with my school program of Peace and Conflict Resolution. Istanbul (and Turkey as a whole) is the perfect conduit for heroin being produced in the middle-east to reach Western European markets. Heroin and other drugs are commodities like anything else, and travel through the same general trade routes as other goods. Turkey is so strategically placed that according to Le Monde diplomatique in 1995 âAn estimated 80% of the heroin on the European market is being processed in Turkish laboratories." (La Dépêche Internationale des Drogues 1995, Nr. 48) So you might ask, âwhatâs so special about heroin traveling through Turkey? Itâs just like any other trade between the middle-east and Europe.â The troublesome point is who controls the trafficking through the country and receives the profits of the trade. This happens to be the PKK, or Kurdistan Workerâs Party, a militant organization with a 30-year history of fighting the Turkish government to establish a separate Kurdish state. âAccording to Interpol [â¦] the PKK was orchestrating 80 % of the European drug marketâ back in 1992, and â[o]ther sources similarly indicate that the PKK controlled between 60 % to 70 %â in 1994 reported the Turkish Daily News.The state of Turkey has been increasing its process of Westernization recently in its desire to join the EU, and this has meant adopting a Western policy on drugs. Turkey has been very successful recently in increasing its police and border control effectiveness and eliminating corruption. The Turkish Daily News gave some convincing numbers: âAccording to the deputy customs undersecretary, there was a 400 percent increase in drug-operation success in the period between 2002 and 2006, when compared to the 1999-2002 period.âHowever, even though Turkey has been, in recent years, dealing more and more forcefully with both the PKK militants and the drug trade, has this actually reduced the trafficking of drugs and the profits of the PKK? In the Turkish Daily News: â[t]he annual revenue made by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has increased to 400-500 million euros, a top Turkish general said late Tuesday.â If the PKKâs revenue has increased, then it is logical to assume Turkeyâs military campaign against them may not be considered a huge success. Not only that, but â200-250 million euros of [the PKKâs] revenue comes from drugs [â¦] Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of General Staff said.â That makes drug trafficking 50% of the organizationâs income!The Turkish state has had a history of valuing the effectiveness of force. It was born from war, and the constitution has a controversial but often-utilized article that allows the Turkish army to organize a coup to eliminate the possibility of having a religious party in power. What is the point of these so-called âhard-lineâ approaches to dealing with the nationâs problems if they are rather ineffective? Very little of course. The trouble comes from what the state could say to its citizens, to the international community, if it negotiated with the violent PKK or began to take the drug trade into the light by moving it towards legalization and either private or state control? If Turkey tried to clean up its smuggling and black market in such a way the majority of Europe, if not the greater âglobal community,â would probably condemn the entire nation of betraying humanity and literally becoming evil. The reaction of many Turkish citizens would be perhaps lighter, but of a similar nature if the state sat down to negotiations with the âterroristâ PKK. These are strong influences on the Turkish state, and severely limit its options. Therefore it seems Turkey doesnât have much of a choice but to pursue the same policy of force it has pursued for more than 30 years, whether it benefit the people or not.
4/20 Gets Bigger Every Year
In 2006, Colorado University police photographed participants in a 4/20 celebration and offered rewards for information leading to their capture. It didn't just fail, it backfired colossally, galvanizing contempt for the drug war and the petty police tactics that have spawned in its name.Two years later, this quote says it all:"We can't do the same thing year after year," [CU police Cmdr.] Wiesley said hours before Sundayâs smoking began. "So I doubt we'll do anything like the pictures. ... There's no way our 12 to 15 officers are going to be able to deal with a crowd of 10,000. We just canât do strong enforcement when we're outnumbered 700 or 800 to one." [dailycamera.com]This video, via Steve Bloom, shows that 4/20 has now evolved from a spattering of small secretive gatherings into a full-blown civil disobedience protest against the war on drugs: Huge turnouts at 4/20 events this year, along with a Chicago Tribune report on the commercialization of the marijuana holiday, are a powerful signal that this phenomenon is becoming rather public. Pete Guither notes in a lovely reflection that we're on an unstoppable trajectory towards victory in the larger fight for drug policy reform and it's hard to argue when you see these teeming masses taking control, if only for a day.I don't think smoking pot in a field is going to end the drug war. But the existence of these events, their size, the surrender of police, the fact that nothing bad happened; these things are illustrative of the resilient and massive drug war resistance.If the war on drugs can be overwhelmed for one day, there is no doubt it can someday be overcome altogether.
How Can We Debate Them if They Don't Even Know What Decriminalization Means?
The Los Angeles Times is publishing a series of debate pieces this week between Saying Yes author Jacob Sullum and Charles Stimson, a former prosecutor and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Here's the first question:What's the difference between drug legalization and decriminalization? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Jacob Sullum's answer is terrific. Charles Stimson's answer begins this way:Two points: First, there is no difference between decriminalization and legalization. Second, whichever term you want to use, it's a bad idea.I suppose there is nothing more predictable in the world than the tendency of drug warriors to open their arguments with sweeping and false generalizations. Still, this is just so dumb and wrong that it barely qualifies as an opinion.We could debate the exact meaning of decriminalization, but it is typically used to describe situations in which penalties are simply reduced, i.e. a fine instead of possible jail time. You can still be taken into custody and subjected to various escalating sanctions. For example, 33,000 people were arrested for possessing small quantities of marijuana in New York City in 2006, despite a decrim policy that's been in effect since 1977. Legalization ends possession arrests and presumably regulates commerce. It shouldn't be necessary to define commonly used legal terms for a senior legal fellow at a prestigious thinktank, but this is the drug war, and as usual, its supporters can be found creating their own reality in which to debate us. After getting the opening question wrong, Stimson launches into a series of preposterous claims. He observes that daily wine consumption improves health, while daily marijuana use destroys the mind. He accuses drug-addicted navy sailors of threatening national security. He suggests that some states don't charge people for committing rape. He insists that drug users have too many children out of wedlock.I can't frickin' wait to hear what he'll say in tomorrow's installment. [thanks, Scott]
A Great 4th Amendment Ruling in Alaska
This is one of the smartest 4th Amendment decisions I've seen in a while:The Alaska Court of Appeals on Friday put law enforcement agencies on notice that it would not tolerate "implicitly coercive" search requests during traffic stops. The warning came in the form of a ruling on the case of Susan S. Brown, a driver pulled over on November 24, 2004 allegedly because of the light illuminating her car's rear license plate was dirty.On that night, Alaska State Trooper Maurizio Salinas never explained to Brown the reason for the stop, nor that he had no intention of issuing a ticket. Instead, Salinas convinced Brown to allow him to search her car and her body -- even though Brown had no warrants and showed no signs of illegal conduct. Salinas testified that his policy was to conduct as many random searches as possible during traffic stops. In this case, Salinas discovered a crack pipe hidden in Brown's coat. Speaking for the unanimous court, Judge David Mannheimer found that such search requests not based upon any reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct abused the rights of motorists.â¦"Motorists who have been stopped for traffic infractions do not act from a position of psychological independence when they decide how to respond to a police officers request for a search," Mannheimer wrote. "Because of the psychological pressures inherent in the stop, and often because of the motorists' ignorance of their rights, large numbers of motorists guilty and innocent alike accede to these requests." [thenewspaper.com]We'll have to wait and see whether Alaska's Supreme Court picks up the case, but if allowed to stand, this decision should significantly undermine the type of "fishing expedition" drug war policing that forces citizens to prove their innocence by the roadside. This ruling reaches the right conclusion for the right reasons, and provides a helpful example of the 4th Amendment's potency at the state level. When you are stopped by police in your neighborhood, it is not George Bush or the PATRIOT Act that determines whether or not your rights were violated. Each state has its own Bill of Rights and sets its own constitutional standards that must be respected by law-enforcement. Those who habitually lament the supposed "death" of the 4th Amendment would do well to familiarize themselves with this concept.A citizenry that understands and appreciates 4th Amendment rights is more likely to produce and appoint judges who will rule in this way. Thus, while we must recognize and expose the many threats to the 4th Amendment that have emerged in recent years, it is essential that such conversations do not indulge the same sense of defeatism that leads citizens to waive these rights in the first place, when they matter most.
Review: Barry Cooper's Never Get Raided DVD
I arrived home yesterday and checked my mail box. Finally my "Never Get Raided" video was here. Shipping seemed to take forever, 3 weeks, but I ordered early so I was able to get an autographed copy. Barry and Candy Cooper are doing yeoman's work in the cannabis culture. I'm so glad they produced this video and hope that every cannabis user and person interested in cannabis law reform watches it.
TV's judge Mathis does a rant over student deferments over pot possession
Never one to hold his tongue Mathis was speaking to a woman about her difficulties with supported housing and the stupid rules and hoops she had to jump.He couldn't help but to bring up the plight of
Mexico City: Goths and Rockeros and Jipis, Oh My!
I spent my first weekend here in Mexico City exploring some of the counterculture of the massive metropolis. One of the places I went was the old Buenavista railroad station. The station is closed now, but right next door is a nearly three-decade old Mexico City phenomenon: the tianguis (market) del chopo, where every Friday and Saturday, the city's various youth culture tribes come out to see and be seen, listen to the latest sounds, and buy music, posters, clothing, pins, and all sorts of other goods. (For a nice introduction to the city's tribes, check out veteran Mexico-watcher John Ross's piece in Counterpunch.) Man, what a show it is! Punkis (punks), skatos (ska fans), metaleros (you guessed it), darketos (Goths) mix with dread-locked followers of Bob Marley, emerging from the Buenavista metro station like a legion of the undead. There's not a lot of directly drug policy-related stuff to be cleaned from the chopo, but I did talk with some of the more jipi (hippie)- type vendors and their clientele. You know, the guys selling the marijuana leaves and extolling the virtues of the herb. But I didn't really hear anything new from them. Sadly, my trip to the rockers' market was a bit spur of the moment, so I didnât have my camera with me. Suffice it to say, there were some pretty impressive mohawks and some pretty glam Goths. While in that neighborhood, north of the historic center of the city, I walked over to the Guerrero metro station in search of a church I heard of where there is supposedly a chapel dedicated to San Jesus Malverde, the (unofficial) patron saint of drug traffickers. I couldn't find it, but the search continues, and so does my quest to find adherents of the church of Saint Death. Supposedly some of these folks are hard-core hard cases, dead-end dopers. I want to see what that's all about. Stay tuned for more on this front. I did get some pics from my visit to the plaza in Coyoacan, an upscale southern suburb. The plaza has been a gathering place for jipis and artists for decades, and the plaza has recently been crowded with the stalls of the vendors, many of them embracing the jipi lifestyle and selling that kind of stuff. But now there's a battle going on between the local government and some businesses on one side and the vendors and their allies on the other. For the last three weeks, the plaza has been torn up for "reconstruction," putting a real damper on the scene there, and there are no plans to make room for the vendors when the project is completed. Part of the authorities problem with the plaza scene is the ongoing drug dealing. It's been known for that for years. But the disruption, not to mention the heavy police presence, has quieted things down for now. I start meeting with people tomorrow, although a big meeting that was set for then has now been pushed back to Thursday. That may pose problems for getting a feature story on Mexico out this week, but the upside is it gives me more time to dig around before that. Meanwhile, the drug war continues. I've been reading La Jornada, a left-leaning Mexico City newspaper, and it has a daily rundown on the killings. There seem to be five or six or ten a day every day, and every day, some of them are cops or soldiers. Friday was a particularly tough day for the military--11 soldiers died when the chopper they were riding in on their way to raid drug fields in Michoacan fell out of the sky.
First time Non-Violent Marijuana offender
Hello, I managed to talk my way out of 4 criminal Charges which included : Trespassing (Private property of the government...it was a well right beside a public park), Possession (of marijuana which in fact they did not find besides resin), Attempted statutory rape( because the person with me was a girl and a minor, even though she's just my best friend), and Carrying paraphernalia (A legal and paid-for glass bowl.)
Prosecutor allegedly targeted in child porn probe is fired
Top drug prosecutor. Sure are a great bunch we have attacking us. This man is from the team that prosecuted me on marijuana charges. I will be watching to see what happens in this case for sure. Let's get out the blind justice scales... Child porn / Marijuana farmer.
Marijuana: Lead-laced Pot Newest Prohibition-related Disaster
Editor's Note: Shane G. Trejo is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.It turns out that prohibition has found an effective way to make marijuana truly toxic. As seen in Germany where marijuana has been tainted with lead in order to increase its weight and increase profits an estimated $682 per pound: One bag bought from a dealer even contained lead particles big enough to see, which meant the lead must have been added deliberately, rather than being absorbed into the plant from contaminated soil. ⦠The authorities do not know where the tainted marijuana came from or why the lead was added, but the German police suspect that it was done to make money. The samples tested contained 10 percent lead by weight, which translates into an increased profit of about $682 per pound of marijuana. Maybe Fox News was onto something when they reported about the killer weed. Of course, legalization and regulation would solve any tainted supply problems of not just marijuana but any drug. If policy makers had any concept of history, they would realize this. Look at what happened during alcohol prohibition in the 1920s: Highly toxic wood alcohols found their way into much of the available bootleg liquor. When denatured industrial alcohol was not sufficiently diluted, or was consumed in large quantities, the result was paralysis, blindness and death. In 1927, almost twelve thousand deaths were attributed to alcohol poisonings, many of these among the urban poor who could not afford imported liquors. In 1930, U.S. public health officials estimated that fifteen thousand persons were afflicted with "jake foot," a debilitating paralysis of the hands and feet brought on by drinking denatured alcohol flavored with ginger root. When was the last time you saw an American alcohol consumer come down with a case of jake foot? Thatâs right, never. Because when a person goes to the store to buy liquor or beer, they know exactly what they are getting. I canât for the life of me remember any deception-related scandals or recalls related to alcohol suppliers. Elected officials choose to ignore the lessons that history has taught us. And as a result, over 100 people have been poisoned in Germany after having to buy marijuana from an unregulated, criminal market. Society suffers while the perpetrators can continue to sell the lead-laced pot with no accountability or consequences.
Drug War 101: Don't Let the Cops into Your House
A couple weeks ago I joined the National Capitol Area ACLU for a door-to-door outreach effort in Southeast D.C. warning citizens about a "knock and talk" program our police department threatened to implement. MPD claimed they were only looking for guns and offered amnesty to citizens who cooperated, but no one really knows what would happen if they found something. Any law-enforcement program that relies on coercing citizens into waiving their 4th amendment rights is inherently flawed and cannot be tolerated.This video, by Flex Your Rights founder Steve Silverman, tells the story:About 1:35 into the video, a woman mistakes us for the police and gives us consent to search. It's funny, but it also proves our point about why this information is needed. For all she knows, someone could have left some marijuana under her couch cushion that could get her kicked out of public housing. Giving consent is never the smart choice during a police encounter. If you need a refresher, watch this.
A dubious honor
The Vancouver city police announced,today,that the city is number one in bank robberies committed.This will come as no surprise to any one that's been on the inside of the drug scene in the city in th
Barney Frank Introduces Marijuana Decriminalization Bill
Via MPP (sorry no link):"The Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008," introduced by Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), would eliminate the threat of arrest and prison for the possession of up to 3.5 ounces of marijuana and/or the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce of marijuana. It would not affect federal laws prohibiting selling marijuana for profit, importing and exporting marijuana, or cultivating marijuana. It also would not affect any state or local laws and regulations.Because almost all marijuana arrests are made by local and state police, the primary impact of this federal bill is twofold: First, it would offer protection to people who are apprehended with marijuana in federal buildings or on federal land (such as national parks); and, second, the bill sends a message to state governments that the federal government is now open to the notion of states reducing their marijuana penalties, too.This historic legislation comes 36 years after the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse made a similar recommendation to President Richard Nixon, suggesting that he decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.Congress can send the right message by passing this bill and demonstrating its commitment to defending individual freedom, while focusing federal law-enforcement resources on real crimes. As Barney Frank argues:"I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals. Federal law enforcement is a serious business, and we should be concentrating our efforts in this regard on measures that truly protect the public."Despite bi-partisan co-sponsorship (Ron Paul, of course), I'm kinda not expecting this thing to become law anytime soon, but it will be fun to see who our friends are. Any debate over the bill will just reveal the idiocy of those in Congress who want federal law enforcement agents busting hippies for half-eighths, instead of defending the homeland from terrorists, zombies, and dancing libertarians.Let it be known that one can stand for sensible drug policy without being voted out of Congress.
If Progress in the Drug War is Measured in Dead Bodies, It's Going Well
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has drawn praise from U.S. drug warriors for his commitment to fighting back against the drug cartels. Unfortunately, current strategies for reducing drug trade violence tend to have the opposite of their intended effect. Via New York Times, this is what you get when you really crack down on the drug traffickers:"a hand-scrawled list of 22 officers, 5 of whom had already been gunned down in the street.""A turf war among drug cartels has claimed more than 210 lives in the first three months of this year.""The number of homicides this year is more than twice the total number of homicides for the same period last year.""Several mass graves hiding 36 bodies in all have been discovered in the backyards of two houses owned by drug dealers.""At the height of the violence, around Easter, bodies were turning up every morning, at a rate of almost 12 a week.""'Neither the municipal government, nor the state government, is capable of taking on organized crime,' Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said in an interview.""The local police are outgunned, underpaid, prone to corruption and lack the authority to investigate drug dealersâ¦""The first batch of 150 new recruits came out of the academy in January, but they entered a force where most officers either feared drug dealers too much to move against them or lived on their payroll."After decades of full-scale international drug war, the central fronts in this great crusade appear before us today literally smoldering, littered with shell-casings and stained in blood. That is drug prohibition's legacy and it will not change or improve. Violence will fluctuate between frequent and perpetual. Illicit drug markets will fluctuate between high availability and totally saturation. That is just the way it is and the way it will always be so long as the people currently in charge of addressing the drug problem are permitted to continue trying their ideas.Thus, any realistic debate over our drug laws shouldn't be spiked with fictitious references to future victories or meaningful progress. An honest defense of the drug war, if such a thing could exist, would have to defend our current conditions and claim that it would be best if things stayed this way forever.
The Drug War Exacerbates Deadly Brazilian Mosquito Plague
If you donât know that the drug war is to blame for all the world's problems, everything you do know will only confuse you. For example, the drug war is helping sustain a deadly mosquito plague in Brazil called the dengue fever:It's true no vaccine exists for the fatal strain, hemorrhagic dengue, which causes internal and external bleeding. But there are preventative measures one can take to avoid being bitten by the Aedes aegypti black mosquito â keeping the body covered, using mosquito nets at night, and avoiding standing water where mosquitoes swarm.The trouble is one in four people in Rio live in poverty in the favelas or shanty-towns where pools of water are common in the rainy season. Efforts to contain the spread of the disease are being hampered by the never-ending drug war which impedes access to the favelas. [thefirstpost]This is probably not what most reformers have in mind when calling for an end to international drug prohibition. But anyone who takes a good hard look at the war no drugs will find a million problems they never imagined. Any cost benefit analysis of drug prohibition is incomplete unless it accounts for every last inconvenience and injustice that we've unleashed in the course of this great fiasco, including the fact that you can't conveniently disinfect puddles in the slums of Rio to prevent plagues.
Lead-tainted Marijuana
Would legalization/regulation have prevented this? The authorities do not know where the tainted marijuana came from or why the lead was added, but the German police suspect that it was done to make money. The samples tested contained 10 percent lead by weight, which translates into an increased profit of about $682 per pound of marijuana.
Headed Down Mexico Way (Again)
Having rested up from my abortive February trip to Mexico, where I was unable to get my pick-up truck past the frontier zone and into Mexico proper for obscure bureaucratic reasons, I am now about to return to Mexico for a couple of weeks of on-the-scene drug war reporting. I'll be in South Dakota Thursday morning and Mexico City in time for dinner Thursday evening. I will spend a week in Mexico City. Among other things, I will be meeting with a member of Congress who has introduced a marijuana decriminalization bill, along with a select group of Mexico City marijuana activists involved in the campaign. I think I will also be spending some time with folks working with hard drug users and drug-using street youth in the city, and I will be interviewing as many academic and other experts as I can about Mexico's vicious drug prohibition-related violence (the death toll this year must be at 900 by now), the Mexican government's resort to the military to try to suppress the drug trade, and the looming multi-billion US drug war aid package. After that, it gets a bit hazy. I have been making efforts to get out into the countryside in some of the conflictive zones, in particular, the mountains of Guerrero (between Mexico City and Acapulco) and the state of Sinaloa, a traditional drug trafficking hotbed, and home of one of the violently competitive so-called drug cartels. But in both places, I've been receiving strong signals that people don't want to talk; that they are scared. I don't know at this point how this will play out, but I strongly suspect I will be heading to Sinaloa at the end of the month, where on April 29 and 30 a local newsweekly is holding a conference on "Drug trafficking, the Merida Initiative and the experiences on depenalization," which will feature a number of high-powered speakers, including a former Mexican attorney general and the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann. This should be interesting. Look for some blog posts starting this weekend and some feature articles in the Chronicle for the next couple of weeks (and perhaps beyond). I'm taking the DRCNet camera, too, so maybe I'll get some good pics. If I do, you'll see 'em here. Speaking of photos, check out the one accompanying this Associated Press story from Tuesday. That's right: It's a "help wanted" banner for the Zetas, the former military elite anti-drug unit members who switched sides, calling on current and former soldiers to call them if they're looking for more remunerative work. That's the country I'm headed to! Hasta la vista, baby.
Job Opportunity: Kill People For a Mexican Drug Cartel
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is super popular with U.S. drug warriors for his crackdown on drug trafficking, but it doesnât sound like the cartels are very scared. If they were, they wouldn't be posting job listings on the highways:(AP) Hitmen tied to Mexico's Gulf cartel appear to be boldly seeking recruits by posting help-wanted signs in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, including a giant banner hung across a thoroughfare, a federal anti-drug enforcement official said Monday.The banner appeared over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo near the border with Texas: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry."Yeah, Calderon's drug war troop surge is a joke that serves only to delay the inevitable realization that the drug war is a contractual guarantee of endless violence. The cartels aren't the least bit intimidated and we havenât seen a fraction of the violence that is possible if Calderon wants to throw more gas on the fire. He'll be voted out of office by war-weary constituents long before he ever drives out the powerful organizations that recruit their armies right out in the open. There is only one way to close these drug war job openings and that is to end the war on drugs.