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Vancouver man part of Alaska smuggling ring
A Vancouver man has been charged with smuggling millions of dollars worth of marijuana stashed in snow mobiles, inflatable boats and travel trailers into Alaska. The thirty-six year old was named in an indictment by a grand jury in anchorage.
Obama Pledges to Continue the Drug War
How shall I respond when a prominent politician rejects drug legalization, while in the same breath criticizing the costs and consequences of our wildly bloated criminal justice system? Should I condemn his tacit endorsement of the drug war or give him credit for at least recognizing a problem that so many still pretend doesnât exist? I guess I'll try to do both.Here's what Barack Obama said when a questioner pointed out how lucky he is to have avoided arrest for his past drug use and asked if he would consider ending the drug war:"I'm not interested in legalizing drugs,'' Obama said, adding that he prefers an approach that puts more emphasis on a public health approach to drugs and less emphasis on incarceration.He said there should be more programs to keep young people from using drugs. And he said first-time offenders should be given help to overcome their drug use instead of being locked up at massive taxpayer expense from which they emerge as unemployable ex-convicts."All we do is give them a master's degree in criminology,'' Obama said. [AP]What a shame that Obama's most forward-thinking comments on criminal justice reform must be prefaced with a rejection of the one idea that has a chance of working. The inherent flaw in Obama's narrow, palatable rhetoric is revealed unintentionally by The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last:The only problem with this is that there are very, very few people incarcerated for first-time drug use. Last goes on to laboriously downplay the persecution of first-time offenders in our criminal justice system. It's an outrageous attempt to argue that everyone in prison deserves to be there. But it does have the effect of reminding us how limited Obama's proposed reforms truly are. The root of our drug war-fueled incarceration crisis lies in the practice of vigorously arresting and criminalizing people for having drugs. As long as this machinery remains in place, our prison population will continue to grow exponentially. Obama's first-time offender focused model of criminal justice reform is like trying to drain an olympic swimming pool with a pint glass.Meanwhile, the drug war itself continues to function as a massive black market job recruitment program; a fully functional drug offender factory whose participants are often much more addicted to grocery money than drugs. Treatment-focused reform strategies don't address or even acknowledge this. Still, it remains perfectly commonplace for proponents of partial criminal justice reform to insist that we continue imprisoning suppliers while searching for ever more suppliers to imprison, all while failing entirely to disrupt supply.The silver lining here is that important people are becoming increasingly comfortable admitting that something is wrong. When the reforms they've agreed upon fail to address the problem, they can't just go back and pretend to be cool with it. They've promised to fix our criminal justice system and if they continue to follow the trail of clues, they will eventually find themselves face to face with the war on drugs.
DEA Agents Sue NBC Universal Over the Film American Gangster
Beneath their flak jackets and blast shields, the super-tough drug soldiers at the DEA are just like everybody else. They have feelings too, and when someone says not-so-nice things about them, it can really hurt:A group of retired federal drug enforcement agents sued NBC Universal on Wednesday, saying the movie "American Gangster" falsely portrayed them as villains in the story of a Harlem heroin trafficker.The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, claims that the movie defamed hundreds of DEA agents and New York City police officers by claiming at the end that Frank Lucas' collaboration with prosecutors "led to the convictions of three-quarters of New York City's Drug Enforcement Agency."â¦According to the lawsuit, no DEA agents or New York City police officers were ever convicted as a result of tips provided by Lucas."This is absolutely off the wall," said Dominic Amorosa, a prosecutor in the federal case against Lucas in 1975 who now represents the DEA agents. "I don't know what these people were thinking, but they are going to pay for it."A Universal Pictures spokesman, Michael Moses, said in a written statement that the lawsuit is "entirely without merit." [AP]I have no knowledge of the specific legal issues involved here, but it's a little creepy to see drug warriors turning to civil court in an effort to suppress the well-known fact that police corruption is commonplace in the war on drugs. Will they now sue us for running our "This Week's Corrupt Cops Story" feature each week?If you ask me, the DEA impugns its own reputation each and every day as its agents continue to target sick people for using medical marijuana and doctors for prescribing pain relievers to patients in chronic pain.If DEA agents or police in general are concerned about negative public perceptions, they can begin by rejecting the war on drugs and its infinitely corrupting influence. They can abandon the "Blue Wall of Silence" and endeavor to purge misconduct from the ranks. And on that glorious day when all the crooks, liars, and cowboys have been stripped of their uniforms, then perhaps it will be possible to sue Hollywood for misrepresenting the profession without provoking amusement.
Update: Marc Emery
The article in the paper was so small I almost missed it. I guess no-one's particularly proud of this one. Mr. Emery not only got to serve his time in Canada, he managed to get his co-accused off the hook as well.
Press Coverage of the Drug War is So Flawed it Actually Encourages People to Sell Marijuana
I wrote yesterday about an absurd report in The Philadelphia Inquirer which valued marijuana at over $100 per joint. As I pointed out, boastful law-enforcement sources frequently collaborate with slothful reporters to produce wildly inaccurate news coverage of the drug war.Obviously, it is just unacceptable to have major news sources reporting frivolous and false information. The laugh-out-loud craziness of implying that a joint costs $100 just shouldnât have made it to print, and we can all gaze at this spectacle and shake our heads as we recognize that the incompetence which made this report possible is perfectly typical. It explains volumes about the media's neglectful role in permitting drug war indoctrination to permeate our collective consciousness each day. It is 2007, and we shouldn't even be reading celebratory drug bust stories anymore, because each new one is a mere exhibit of the failure of those that came before it.But, beyond all of that, it stands to reason that such coverage has a remarkable potential to entice individuals to enter the drug trade in the first place. The theoretical deterrent value of reporting on major drug busts and the fate of the perpetrators is surely undermined when profit margins are overstated so dramatically.If one believes The Philadelphia Inquirer that 16 pounds of high-grade marijuana can be sold for $812,000, and one subsequently stumbles across an opportunity to acquire that amount for the (more likely) price of $50,000-80,000, they might be intrigued. By routinely exaggerating the street value of illegal drugs, the press renders itself an inadvertent advertising campaign for the lucrative business of black market drug distribution.I've heard, but cannot confirm, that the Canadian press has sought to scale back this exact behavior after a revelation that constantly reporting on multi-million dollar marijuana seizures was having the effect of convincing people that it's easy to make a million dollars growing pot. I have no idea whether this is accurate, but it's certainly amusing to consider the possibility that all of this reckless drug war reporting is simply emboldening prospective marijuana entrepreneurs.One wonders, therefore, how many more of these drug bust press conferences our intrepid journalists are willing to snooze their way through before becoming overcome with déjà vu and finding themselves compelled by the distant call of journalistic integrity to do anything other than cut and paste the predictable pontifications of the proud pot police into the morning paper.
Prince of Pot Pleads Out
Marc Emery, the self-styled Prince of Pot has accepted a plea bargain which would see him serve five years in a Canadian prison. It's difficult to gauge how much influence the numerous petitions and letter campaigns had in the justice system offering this deal.
Banning Cylindrical Objects Won't Stop People from Smoking Crack
You know those little roses that come in glass tubes? You can buy them at gas stations for a buck or two and then use them however you see fit. And, as luck would have it, some folks like to put crack in them and smoke it. It should therefore come as no surprise to find people calling for a ban on these so-called "love roses."â¦Reverend Michael Latham, the leader of the local NAACP Chapter, says these "love roses" are littering our streets and damaging our community.Rev. Michael Latham: "Take it out. Don't sell it. And, understand it's being used to for smoking crack cocaine. I think Fort Wayne has a real serious crack problem."Latham is calling for a boycott of at least three gas stations in Fort Wayne after calling the owners to complain. [Indianasnewscenter.com] "love roses" on the evening news, for all the wrong reasons No word yet on whether Latham plans to target larger crack paraphernalia outlets such as Home Depotâ¢, or the not-so-subtly named Container Storeâ¢, which sells almost nothing that couldn't be used to consume or transport narcotics. Last time I went there, they didnât even card me to make sure I'm over eighteen!Inevitably, when the citizens of Ft. Wayne, Indiana endeavor to misdirect their concerns over the local drug problem, they've got a powerful ally in their congressman, drug war hall-of-shamer Mark Souder.Mark Souder/Congressman, 3rd District: "I support a boycott. That's voluntary consumer decision."Did Mark Souder just use the term "voluntary consumer decision"? Lucky me, I'd have bet anyone anything that we'd never hear those words leave his lips given his career-long commitment to jailing certain consumers for the voluntary decisions they make. Souder then proceeds to celebrate his sudden affinity for consumer choice by proposing a new law banning small containers:Co-Chair of the House Drug Policy Caucus, Souder thinks Latham's plan is a good one. The Congressman hopes to go one step further in the near future with a law banning hidden drug compartments, like these.Mark Souder/Congressman, 3rd District: "I believe when something is used solely for illegal purposes, it should be illegal."Even if "love roses" were literally never used for anything other than smoking crack, their prohibition would still accomplish nothing absent the simultaneous prohibition of other popular crack accessories such as soda cans, cigarettes, and radio antennas. But I also don't see why these pretty little roses couldn't sometimes be used just to brighten someone's day.Remind me to send Mark Souder a dozen "love roses" for Valentine's Day.
Philadelphia Police Say Marijuana Costs $100 Per Joint
Exaggerating the value of drug seizures is an age-old tactic in the drug war. Fuzzy math can turn a routine bust into a career-making front page news story, so it's no surprise that narcotics officers frequently miscalculate the value of their scores. But when a major paper like The Philadelphia Inquirer inadvertently values marijuana at $100 per joint, you know things have gotten out of hand:Today, police laid out 16 pounds of the stuff they said they confiscated from a high-level dealer who supplied the suburbsâ¦Police put the value of the marijuana at $812,000. On Tuesday, as the probe continued, investigators seized 12 pounds of hallucinogenic mushrooms worth $614,000 and more than $439,000 in cash, police said. [Philadelphia Inquirer]Really?!? Let's do the math. $812,000 / 16 pounds / 16 ounces / 28.3 grams = $112.08 per gram. That's a hearty marijuana joint for $112. The same formula finds them valuing the mushrooms at a whopping, and oddly similar, $113 per gram.Just look at High Times Magazine's Market Quotes for marijuana to see that the highest street prices come nowhere close to these wildly false numbers. A gram of the very best pot can fetch $25-30, usually less. It is literally as though they calculated the value of the seizure and added a zero at the end (actually that's currently my best guess as to what happened here).This is what we get when reporters simply pass along claims from police regarding drugs. Law-enforcement's lack of expertise on certain drug-related matters, combined with their incentive to exaggerate their own achievements, creates an obvious imperative that the press seek to substantiate such claims before offering them to the public. This announcement from The Philadelphia Inquirer that marijuana costs $100 per joint is just a perfect example of the media's ongoing failure to provide responsible coverage of the war on drugs. [Thanks, Irina]
Island growers happy withmedical-marijuana court ruling
Now the growers of medical marijuana on Vancouver Island are lining up for a piece of the lucrative action. A Duncan company, Island Harvest, applauded the decision as it opens the field for suppliers to sell to more than one patient.
A Grand Total of Five Cops Died Fighting the Drug War Last Year
As the calendar flips over to a new year, law enforcement and the mass media have been trumpeting an increase in law enforcement line of duty deaths, which will doubtless be used to seek more funding for more, better-armed cops. Last year, 187 law enforcement personnel died in the line of duty, up from 145 the year before. Of those, nearly half (82) died in traffic accidents, while another 61 were shot and killed (including at least two accidentally shot by fellow officers). Another seven armed forces law enforcement personnel died in bomb attacks in Iraq, two law enforcement personnel fell to their deaths, at least two died of heart attacks during training exercises, and one died of a wasp sting. The police repeatedly warn that they face grave danger from drug dealers, necessitating the resort to SWAT-style policing on routine drug raids. But according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, the most comprehensive listing of police fatalities we know of, a grand total of five police officers died enforcing the drug laws last year: a Tennessee highway patrolman killed when he pulled over some Texas teens with a carload of marijuana; a Toledo, Ohio, detective killed when he attempted to break up a street drug deal; a Dallas cop killed in a confrontation with a suspect in a murder at a drug house; a Puerto Rico cop killed trying to make a drug arrest; and a Rialto, California, cop killed while executing a drug search warrant. Given an estimated 1.8 million drug arrests last year (that figure is actually from 2006; expect it to go slightly for 2007 as it does every year), that comes out to one police officer killed in every 360,000 drug arrests. I'll be writing a feature article this week on the dangers of drug law enforcement. Look for more details on these deaths, as well as an examination of the need for SWAT-style policing on routine drug raids.
She's at it again
Surrey mayor Dianne Watts is in the news again (big surprise) demanding a drug court for Surrey. She's totally pissed about the time it takes to put one together and is tired of waiting for her turn. Mayor Watts failed to inform anyone when she received her medical degree.
Another one bites the dust
Another young man was shot in the head outside a down town nightclub. It is not known what the cause or why the killing. There's still a shooting a day going down. The perpetrators are not professional as before and many can't shoot straight.
I just want the stupidity to end
I may not write much on this blog as I have several others and am working on promoting my book, but I did want to say a few things. I have fibromyalgia, and while this isn't AIDS or cancer the pain is awful some days. Could marijuana help me? I don't know and I don't dare find out because I fear the police raiding my home if I apply for medical marijuana. Being bipolar I can be paranoid at times but this isn't paranoia--people who are medical marijuana users have had their homes invaded. I shudder when I hear of the terrible way they have been treated. Often they are very ill. This kind of trauma is more than they can bear.
No Wonder They "Went in Shooting" -- SWAT Team Had Violent Animated Gif on Web Site Before Killing Tarika Wilson
Radley Balko pointed out on The Agitator that the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team's web site had an animated gif on it which seemed to fire into the faces of web site visitors: Check out Google's cached copy of the page here to see it in context. Since they killed 26-year-old Tarika Wilson, an innocent mother of six, and maimed her youngest son, a one-year-old, they've taken the violent image off of the site, though. It's not hard to see why they "went in shooting" to her home, as Wilson's sister described it. A policing, SWAT team culture that would allow such an image to go on their own official home page, is a culture that is simply prone to reckless, "cowboy" behavior. Frankly, it seems like they were having a little too much fun being a SWAT team. As the saying goes, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." This time it was a life that was lost, and a child's finger. But it was never fun for the people on the other end. According to the web page, the Lima SWAT team conducts about 50 raids a year, about once a week. I looked up the city's population to try and get a sense of how much that is, and it's a mere 38,219 (estimate July '06). That's bigger than Mayberry, but it's not a metropolis by any means. So I think that one SWAT raid a week there is a huge number. One would think one was living in Baghdad, for such extreme measures to be used once a week in a jurisdiction that size. The page says that most of the raids were on crack houses. There's the explanation -- they are using the SWAT team not for the extreme or emergency situations that SWAT is meant for, but on routine drug enforcement. The federal government is probably funding them on a per-arrest basis. I can't imagine it's pleasant to live near a crack house. But the overwhelming majority of crack houses don't have drug kingpins or terrorists hiding in them. The appropriate approach is to knock and announce, wait an appropriate amount of time, and then if the door hasn't been opened, to force it open but to do so cautiously. (Actually the appropriate approach is to put the crack houses out of business through legalization, but that's another issue.) Drug dealers are not in the business to kill cops and become the most hunted fugitives on the planet. Drug dealers are trying to make money. Police don't need to enter in dramatic and sudden force to protect their lives. The dealers aren't going to shoot them, they're going to try to disappear or hide or dispose of the evidence. Last year we looked into police officer fatalities doing drug enforcement, and out of two million drug arrests per year we could only find four of them in all of 2006, with only two of those directly related to drug arrests. In the rare situations when you need a SWAT team, it's important that it be there for you. Lima's almost two hours from the nearest big city, Columbus, so maybe they should have their own. But I can only say maybe, partly because there would be at least one more living person in Lima now if they didn't. They certainly shouldn't be using it 50 times a year. PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS.
Ron Paul on CNN - "I'm the only candidate saying I'll pardon all non-violent drug offenders!"
Last night, before Fox's debate, Ron Paul was brought onto Wolf's show on CNN and accused of being a racist - based upon a few articles written in a newsletter over 15 years ago - articles that Ron Paul didn't write, has apologized for in the past, and his record clearly shows are against his principles.
BE SURE TO VOTE IN THE PRIMARIES
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New Hope for Marijuana Jan.10,2008
The court ruled today that it was against the charter of rights and freedoms for the government to hold a patent on the growing of medical marijuana in Canada. This should open the door to growing of medical marijuana by any one that thinks they have a superior product.
The Truth About Driving When You're High on Marijuana
Concerns about stoned drivers careening across our nation's highways are frequently cited as a justification for the continued criminalization of marijuana. Given the massive casualties associated with drunk driving, it's easy to understand how the specter of increased roadside fatalities can be effective in reinforcing negative attitudes about marijuana. However, a new report reveals that, while stoned driving isn't smart, it's hardly the death sentence some would have us believe.NORML's Paul Armentano has prepared a scientific review of over a dozen studies evaluating marijuana's effect on psychomotor skills and the risks posed by marijuana intoxication behind the wheel. Armentano finds that marijuana impairment is generally "subtle and short-lived," falling far short of the threats posed by drunk driving. Although acute cannabis intoxication following smoking has been shown to mildly impair psychomotor skills, this impairment is seldom severe or long lasting. In closed course and driving simulator studies, marijuanaâs acute effects on psychomotor performance include minor impairments in tracking (eye movement control) and reaction time, as well as variation in lateral positioning, headway (drivers under the influence of cannabis tend to follow less closely to the vehicle in front of them), and speed (drivers tend to decrease speed following cannabis inhalation). In general, these variations in driving behavior are noticeably less consistent or pronounced than the impairments exhibited by subjects under the influence of alcohol. Also, unlike subjects impaired by alcohol, individuals under the influence of cannabis tend to be aware of their impairment and try to compensate for it accordingly, either by driving more cautiously or by expressing an unwillingness to drive altogether. [see original for citations]Of course, the point here isnât that one should get stoned and cruise the strip blasting Led Zeppelin. But this is information one would want if they were trying to create a smart marijuana policy as opposed to the disgraceful mess of legislative lunacy currently passing for marijuana law in America.Whenever someone claims that marijuana makes you sick or crazy; that it will cause you to crash your car, kill your comrades, or catastrophically co-opt your common sense, just look for the corpses. Where are they? I've looked high and low, but I can't find the disastrous consequences of marijuana use apparent anywhere other than the Drug Czar's predictably propagandized press releases. But to be fair, there are two horrible things about marijuana that everyone should be mindful of and they are as follows: 1) the smell attracts cops, nosy neighbors, and mooches and 2) the stuff remains detectable in your system for up to a month, thereby enabling various authorities to become needlessly aware of your activities.If not for these two unfortunate conditions, the marijuana war wouldn't even begin to work, and the blockheads who've been bothering to fight it would've wandered off decades ago.
Alert: A SWAT Team Shot a Mother and Child Last Week -- Take Action Now to Stop the Madness!
CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS In November 2006, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was killed by police during a raid conducted at the wrong house. Ms. Johnston fired at the police officers as they were breaking in through her living room window. Three officers were injured, but Ms. Johnston was struck 39 times and died at the scene. In July 2007, Mike Lefort, 61, and his mother, Thelma, 83, were surprised and thrown to the ground when Thibodeau, Louisiana police burst into the wrong house with a "no knock" warrant. Thelma suffered from a spike in her blood pressure and had a difficult time overcoming the shock. In March 2007, masked police officers in Jacksonville, Florida, mistakenly burst into the home of Willie Davis, grandfather of murdered DreShawna Davis, and his mentally disabed son. The pair were forced to the ground, where they watched helplessly as police tore apart the memorabilia from DreShawn's funeral. The drug sale that never happened was said to involve all of two crack rocks worth $60. One would think after Atlanta police killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, that they would get the idea, but they haven't. Last Friday, 1/4/08, a SWAT team, serving an ordinary drug search warrant, invaded the Ohio home of Tarika Wilson -- an innocent woman -- shot and killed her, and shot her one-year-old son. "They went in that home shooting," her mother said at a vigil that night. The boy lost at least one of his fingers. Two dogs were shot too. SWAT teams were created to deal with extreme situations, not routine ones. Yet police now conduct tens of thousands of SWAT raids every year, mostly in low-level drug enforcement. The result is that people like Wilson and Johnston continue to die in terror, with many thousands more having to go on living with trauma. But it's all for a drug war that has failed and can't be made to work. It's time to rein in the SWAT teams. Please sign our online petition: ">Enough is Enough: Petition to Limit Paramilitary Police Raids in America." A copy will be sent in your name to your US Representative and Senators, your state legislators, your governor, and the president. When you're done, please tell your friends and please spread the word wherever you can. This is a first step. Take it with us today, and there can be more. Enough is enough -- no more needless deaths from reckless SWAT raids! Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for more information about this issue, including our October Zogby poll showing that 66% of Americans, when informed about the issue, don't think police should use aggressive entry tactics when doing routine drug enforcement. CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS StoptheDrugWar.org (still known to many of our readers as DRCNet, the Drug Reform Coordination Network), is an international organization working for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and for reform of drug policy and the criminal justice system in the US. Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle for the latest issue of our acclaimed weekly newsletter, Drug War Chronicle.
The Drug War is a Training Camp for Corrupt Cops
In order to fight the drug war, police are trained in all the skills they need to become effective criminal masterminds. And many of them end up doing exactly that. The Los Angeles Times tells the story of a group of narcotics officers who formed a gang that robbed dealers and sold drugs. It's a disturbing, though perfectly typical and illustrative, example of how the drug war functions as a training seminar in police corruption.In the beginning, corruption is just a tactic for catching the bad guy:Palomares admitted on the stand that he and fellow officers periodically planted drugs -- "cop dope," he called it -- on suspects against whom they didn't have sufficient evidence and then wrote false police reports, but he said he felt doing so was justified."We felt we were at war," he said. The officers who did such things, he said, "were the officers who really did their jobs and didn't let the gang members win."Then it escalates. Widespread corruption inspires "clean" officers to turn dirty and get a taste of the action:Palomares said he turned to crime after getting hurt on the job and becoming disillusioned by the suspension and subsequent firing of officers implicated in the Rampart police corruption scandal. Good cops, once corrupted, make the best bad cops:Palomares said William Ferguson, whom he met while the two worked together briefly in the Rampart Division, was a thorough searcher whom he could count on to find drugs or money hidden in locations where they conducted their bogus raids."I used to joke that he was like a bloodhound," Palomares testified, a slight smile crossing his face. "If there were drugs, I knew he would find them."Police training and resources are converted into instruments of criminality:Under questioning by prosecutor Jeffrey S. Blumberg of the Justice Department's civil rights division, Palomares at times sounded like an active duty police officer as he talked about "formulating a plan" prior to doing "takedowns" on the locations.Blumberg asked about the significance of arriving at the locations in a police car."That way we wouldn't have any resistance or any problems," Palomares said.It's important to note that the reason police are constantly arrested for drug war corruption isnât because they're sloppy. These are highly skilled criminals with unique knowledge of how to keep their criminal enterprises under the radar. The reason we hear stories like this so often is because police corruption in the drug war is incredibly commonplace and endemic. Thus, for every such story one reads, countless similar operations continue undetected.As this story illustrates, it does not matter if narcotics officers are subjected to rigorous psychological evaluations, background checks, or financial disclosures. This is all irrelevant because they aren't dirty when they arrive. They are rendered that way by the inherent filthiness of the job itself. The grinding, fruitless, repetitive process of whacking moles with a mallet leaves one defeated and desperate. As frustration ensues, one eventually casts the mallet aside and commences kicking the arcade machine until the coins come pouring out.So if anybody needs a concrete demonstration of the drug war's inevitable continued failure, look no further than the daily revelations in our nation's newspapers about the role of police themselves in redistributing confiscated narcotics for personal profit.