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Fascist drug war maintains slavery through free prison labor
The American economic system has always been based on slavery. That legacy continues through the drug war. The excessive greed of the American slavemasters is destroying our environment, stripping a
Debate Over Afghan Opium Medicalization Coming to Washington
The pressure to medicalize poppy cultivation in Afghanistan won't go away. The idea continues to find new proponents because it sounds considerably less absurd than asking Afghan families to give up on feeding themselves.From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:After a year of escalating Afghan heroin production, calls are mounting for a shift in U.S. policy aimed at turning Afghanistan's poppy into an economic asset by using it to produce medicinal painkillers.Backers of the proposal include several leading scientists and economists, as well as some in Congress.â¦"You can't just cut off the poppies because that's the livelihood of the people who live there," [Rep. Russ] Carnahan said Thursday. "But providing them with alternative legal markets for pain-relief medication is a way to help cut back on that heroin supply."Congratulations, Russ Carnahan! You solved the riddle. Extra points if you can dumb this down enough to explain it to the drug policy experts at the State Department.Tom Schweich, a senior State Department official who is spearheading U.S. efforts to curb Afghan narcotics, said he welcomed "creative ideas" but found this one to be unrealistic.He said Afghan farmers wouldn't have enough economic incentive to turn away from illegal poppy cultivation. He added that Afghanistan lacks the required business infrastructure for processing, manufacturing and distribution, and that the oversight needed to prevent illicit drug trafficking would be near impossible.Ok, we're listening. Yes, it's complicated situation. So what do you propose?"You really need to keep it illegal and eradicate it," Schweich said.Darn, he blew it. For a second there I thought he understood something.Schweich rattles off a list of reasons why eradication won't work and then, like some sort of involuntary reflex, spontaneously proposes eradication. He sees all the reasons eradication won't work, but he cites them as arguments against Carnahan's plan rather than his own. Such rank incompetence might be funny if the fate of a nation weren't hanging in the balance.
Break traffic laws and not get in trouble? Want to be exempt? Become a cop
It's possible for the police to attach a GPS tracking device your vehicle, enabling them to track your every move. That is unless youâre the police, their exempt, just ask the mayor. In an article in the NLECTC Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology News
So You Don't Have To
My favorite blog Drug War Rant frequently reports on my least favorite blog, the ONDCP's Pushing Back, a habit I intend to undertake myself, since Pete can't possibly find time to counter every last kernel of incoherent kookiness to be found there. Unfortunately, the only way to learn what they're saying is to visit them and risk perpetuating this:ONDCP would like to thank all of the loyal readers of Pushing Back for helping make this blog a success. Thanks in part to you, we are now averaging over 300,000 hits per month!Yes, thanks in small part to spite-readers like us and in large part to ONDCP not telling the truth about its web traffic, their blog is a huge success according to them. As Pete Guither explains, their claims are not demonstrably false, but rather meaningless either way:Note the use of the word "hits." It may be technically true that Pushing Back is getting 300,000 hits per month, if you use server terminology. In that case, every call of the server counts as a hit, so as a single page is loading it could call upon the server dozens or hundreds of times to load images, run scripts, etc. "Hits" may be useful for analyzing the way you organize your site to reduce server overload, but means very little in terms of the number of people who come to read your site.In other words, ONDCP uses misleading rhetoric to claim that people like reading their misleading rhetoric.And we've now found ourselves frequently visiting this blog in order to expose its erroneous claims of being popular. It seems a bit silly, but not as silly as ONDCP bragging about their site traffic when anyone can look them up at Technorati.com and see that every single link to their blog is hostile.The conspicuous absence of friendly or even neutral links to Pushing Back is notable. It shows that reformers are the only ones reading it, but it also shows how many potential drug war supporters aren't interested enough to discuss the issue. It's a powerful example of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson's observation that support for the drug war is a mile wide, but only an inch deep. Across the vast blogosphere, otherwise an epic political battleground, we can't seem to find much opposition.In the meantime, I'll continue reading the Drug Czar's blog. So you don't have to.
Mexican Federal Police Take Tijuana By Storm -- Too Bad It Won't Work
A Reuters article this afternoon reported that Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, is sending over 3,000 troops to Tijuana in a crackdown aimed at stemming the ongoing violence that has wracked the border city in recent years. The first 500 arrived today and are investigating charges of corruption in the local police force: As two helicopters circled overhead, dozens of troops with assault rifles and riot shields converged on a police headquarters to inspect weapons, a first step in probing alleged drug gang links and corruption inside the local force. The move comes only three weeks since Calderon sent 7,000 troops to his own home state of Michoacan. 2,000 people were killed in drug trade violence in Mexico last year. One of the guests at DRCNet's 2003 conference in Mexico, "Out from the Shadows, Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century" ("Saliendo de las Sombras: Terminando de le Prohibición de las Drogas en el Siglo XXI" en Español) was Gregorio Urias German, a Mexican congressman from Sinaloa, another part of the country that has suffered in the drug wars. Urias blames drug prohibition for this violence, but he fears that "If we can't even discuss the alternatives, if we can't even admit the drug war is a failure, then we will never solve the problem." He said that existing forums, such as the UN and the Organization of American States, are not fruitful places for discussion, "because only the repressive policies of the United States are discussed at these forums." While it is not the job of media outlets like Reuters to take a position favoring legalization in their news reporting, they will be doing a better job when they start to include leaders like Urias in their articles who hold that point of view. This Google News link will pull up a list of hundreds of appearances of this news story that are currently active in the mainstream media (many though not all the Reuters story or another by the AP). We encourage you to follow the links and submit some letters to the editor. Post them back here along with the letter-writing info for others.
I've Got Those Mean Old Bolivian Visa Blues
With my departure for South America set for 10 days from now, the Bolivian government has put a hitch in my plans. Bolivian President Evo Morales announced yesterday that as of now, American citizens will need a visa to visit Bolivia. As the Associated Press reported: LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The government of President Evo Morales approved a decree Monday requiring U.S. citizens to obtain visas to enter Bolivia. Morales said the decree "a matter of reciprocity." The U.S. government requires Bolivians to obtain visas to enter the United States. "We are a small country but we have the same dignity as any other," Morales said. The decree, approved during a Cabinet meeting, applies to other countries, including Serbia and Montenegro and Cyprus. In February 2006, Leonilda Zurita, a congresswoman belonging to Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party, had her U.S. visa revoked. Zurita said Washington cited an alleged link between her and terrorist activities, which she denied. Morales also cited security concerns for the rule. An American man has been charged with setting off bombs in two La Paz hotels in March. Two Bolivians were killed and seven people were injured, including an American woman. U.S. ties to Bolivia have been tense partly due to Morales' friendship with Presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, as well as by Morales' background as the leader of coca growers fighting U.S. attempts to eradicate their crops. What the AP did not make clear is that the visa requirement for Bolivians to enter the US is a recent, post-911 move by the US reversing years of visa-free travel for South Americans coming north. The Brazilian government has also imposed a visa requirement for Americans now in this game of diplomatic tit-for-tat. Thanks, Mr. Bush. What this means for my trip is unclear at this point. The Bolivian consulate in Washington wasn't answering the phone today. One of colleagues in the Washington office will run over there first thing tomorrow morning to try to find out what the new requirements are and how fast I can actually get a visa. I am going first to Peru, which hasn't imposed a visa requirement, and it may be possible to get a visa there, but I don't know that yet. I'll keep you all updated on the situation. (Read the comment I've posted to learn a little more about Leonilda Zurita. - DB)
Violence Rate Rising Again -- AP Doesn't Mention Prohibition
An Associated Press article today reports that the homicide rate in the US is going up again: After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed in 2006 in New York and many other U.S. cities, including Rocky Mount, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places. (Rocky Mount is a North Carolina community whose local paper drew on the AP story to produce this article. Among the reasons given: gangs, drugs, the easy availability of illegal guns, a disturbing tendency among young people to pull guns when they do not get the respect they demand and, in Houston at least, an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. While drug warriors like former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani credited the "broken windows" theory of policing and tough sentences in general for the crime drop, criminologists pointed instead to a range of factors -- a decrease in the number of youth in the population figured prominently. (With my elementary school -- Roosevelt -- having been converted into a condominium -- The Roosevelt -- because of demographics, I was aware that fewer kids were growing up for awhile.) A corollary is that with youth numbers expected to go up again, crime would eventually go up again too. And now it has (yes, in New York too). The AP story did not go into the role of drug prohibition in all of this. Basically, it is prohibition of drugs that causes the vast majority of the drug-related violence -- pharmacologically-induced violence, acts committed because of being under the influence of drugs -- makes up only a small portion of the total. Drug-related violence is first and foremost the violence of the drug trade -- gangs and other sellers fighting it out over turf. The illegal drug trade exists solely because the drugs are illegal. The second most important cause of drug-related violence is economic crimes committed to get the money needed to buy drugs. This would mostly go away if drugs were legal because the price of the drugs would drop to normal market levels and addicts would not need to commit crimes to afford them. It's impossible to have a serious discussion of the causes of violence without discussing -- without even mentioning -- the consequences of prohibition. This must be stated over and over and over until the people leading the discussion take note. Click here to submit a letter to the editor to the Telegram, and here for info on their letter standards. Please make a post here with a link or letter to the editor information for any other papers where you see the AP story or articles based on it.
Framing the Question
Seems to me the real question that must be addressed is this; As we live in a 'free' country, where people should have the right to do as they wish absent harms to others, the government should be able to show an overwhelming social need for the restriction of any freedoms. They should also be required to prove that the curtailment of freedom is resulting in results consistent with that overwhelming social need. Too often, the arguments for the continuance of this drug war are a mishmash of lies, half lies, misinformation, bombast and hyperbole. We must redefine it or we will continue to lose.
Mile High Medical Pot
My name is Ken Gorman. I'm a marijuana activist in Denver Colorado. My efforts over the last 14 years actually did change our laws and the way people think about marijuana.
Editorial: One of My Many Wishes for the New Year
This editorial was published as part of our 12/29/06 "Mini-Bulletin." The entire bulletin can be read online here. One of the news items today -- not in drug policy -- was the filing of an ethics complaint by the North Carolina Bar Association against Mike Nifong, the now high-profile prosecutor in the case involving three Duke University lacrosse players who originally faced rape charges and are still charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. The complaint comes on the heels of a letter sent by a member of Congress from the state, asking the US Attorney General to investigate Nifong. No, I'm not about to express a wish related to this case. I'm not familiar enough with it to express what I would consider an informed opinion, and I wouldn't post such an opinion here in this drug policy newsletter if I did. But I do know something about prosecutorial misconduct in general. For example, that a 2003 report by the Center for Public Integrity, "Harmful Error," found that it is widespread but almost never punished. According to CPI, prosecutorial misconduct falls mainly in several categories: courtroom misconduct; mishandling of physical evidence; failing to disclose exculpatory evidence; threatening, badgering or tampering with witnesses; using false or misleading evidence; harassing, displaying bias toward, or having a vendetta against the defendant or defendant's counsel; improper behavior during grand jury proceedings. (There's much more detail about these, of course, on the web site.) Another thing I know about prosecutorial misconduct is that the most common victim of it is black or brown, and poor, is not enrolled at a prestigious university, and doesn't have the best lawyers that money can buy. Media outlets, certainly national ones, almost never focus on their cases. Often they receive the arguably sound advice that innocent or guilty they should really not fight the charges, or the outcome will be much worse. And the Bar Association won't do anything about their cases, because there are just too many. Misconduct in the criminal justice system is by no means limited to the ranks of prosecutors. Police are also serious, perennial offenders. For example, a recent case in Hartford, Connecticut involved a retired police officer who was convicted recently of falsifying an arrest warrant. His colleagues came to his defense, arguing that this was common practice in the department. The judge gave him a special form of probation that will allow him to get his record expunged upon completion of it. The trial has myriad implications. First, there is confirmation by actual police officers, under oath, that police officers constantly break the law in order to make arrests. Second, the officers obviously felt comfortable enough with that fact to state it publicly, before a judge. Third, the judge was okay enough with this to give the officer a sentence that is a little more than a slap on the wrist, but not all that much more. How is police and prosecutorial misconduct to be stemmed if it is tolerated? And if it isn't, how can we in the public have faith in the outcome of any criminal case? One of my many wishes for the New Year is that fewer police and prosecutors commit misconduct, and that more complaints are filed against those who do.
The Rack N' Roll Conspiracy
It's diabolical! It's confusing! It's the Rack N' Roll Conspiracy and Radley Balko has created an entire category for it.This is the story of David Ruttenberg, the totally law-abiding owner of Rack N' Roll billiards in Manassas, Virginia, who for years now has been targeted in repeated and fruitless attempts to link his business to drug activity. His livelihood is now almost completely destroyed and most of the cops and public officials in Manassas seem to be in on it. Motivated by an apparent desire to build an off-track betting facility on the property, Manassas police and others have spared no expense in this otherwise inexplicable series of bizarre events.My favorite part is when Ruttenberg tries to explain his plight to a local news reporter at 1:00 in the morning and the Mayor suddenly jumps out of the bushes and tells the reporter not to trust to him.Balko's research illustrates the ease with which ambiguous allegations of drug activity can be used by politicians as leverage against their enemies. Still, I suspect that the only thing unique about this story is the fact that someone as meticulous as Balko took an interest in it. His work on the Cory Maye case similarly illustrates the improbability of severe police corruption coming to light absent the involvement of a politically savvy blogger from Washington, D.C. When business owners can be held liable for activities they had no knowledge of, it becomes painfully easy for corrupt officials with ulterior motives to capitalize on malfeasance. If you were trying to screw over a business owner, how would you do it? Think about how easy it is to frame someone for drugs. Think about it, then ask yourself how often it happens.
Corruption and Misconduct: Bastard Children of the War on Drugs
One of the most widely ignored consequences of the drug war is its negative influence on the men and women who carry it out. Two disturbing stories from local papers illustrate the drug war's profound ability to criminalize our public servants.First, a revealing story of police misconduct from The Journal Inquirer in North Central Connecticut:A Hartford police detective arrested days after his retirement in 2004 on charges of falsifying an arrest warrant has been granted a special form of probation that could lead to his arrest record being expunged.The decision came after a hearing in which [Sgt. Franco] Sanzo's lawyer, Jake Donovan of Middletown, called another retired officer who said that police frequently sign their names to warrants - and swear before judges - that they've seen things they haven't.So basically Sanzo's defense was that this type of misconduct is a matter of routine at his department. And it worked! I don't know if I'm more shocked that a defense attorney would offer an argument so contemptuous towards the Fourth Amendment, or that a judge would actually be persuaded by an attempt to rationalize police misconduct.
Monitoring the Future Annual Report Warns of Prescription Drug Use
The annual Monitoring the Future survey of drug use among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders was released Thursday. The news is mixed, the researchers report. Here's the opening of their press release:
Only One Commutation :) Ask for More!
According to the Associated Press, President Bush issued 16 pardons yesterday, including one sentence commutation. Six of them including the commutation were for drug offenses. (For those of you who are not familiar with this, a pardon can simply mean that an old offense is wiped off of one's record -- feels good, may help with employment and other matters, but the individual was already finished with any incarceration that was part of the sentence.) A commutation is when someone actually gets out early or finishes parole or probation early. According to the AP: Bush also granted a commutation of sentence to Phillip Anthony Emmert of Washington, Iowa, whose case involved conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. He was sentenced Dec. 23, 1992, to 262 monthsâ imprisonment (reduced on Feb. 21, 1996) and five yearsâ supervised release. Bush directed that Emmertâs sentence expire on this coming Jan. 20, but left the supervised release intact. Please contact the White House to let them know that: 1) We're glad he's releasing Phillip Emmert; 2) One commutation is nowhere near good enough. The president should release more nonviolent drug offenders this year! Just a few of the more well known ones: Weldon Angelos, Clarence Aaron, Lawrence & Lamont Garrison.
Marijuana Defeats Mexican Soldiers in Battle
From The Washington Post:Soldiers trying to seize control of one Mexico's top drug-producing regions found the countryside teeming with a new hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year-round and cannot be killed with pesticides.Soldiers fanned out across some of the new fields Tuesday, pulling up plants by the root and burning them, as helicopter gunships clattered overhead to give them cover from a raging drug war in the western state of Michoacan. The plants' roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.You gotta hand it to these brave soldiers for standing their ground against such a resourceful enemy. Research into marijuana hybridization has largely been conducted in secret, but it's well understood that this plant is particularly amenable to genetic modification. The abundance of diverse strains with silly names is more than a marketing scheme. Marijuana grows and breeds vigorously, thus it's relatively easy for knowledgeable people (who aren't in jail) to design marijuana plants that are ideal for certain growing conditions.The ability to withstand chemical warfare is marijuana's most impressive achievement yet, although curing all sorts of diseases is pretty cool too.I always feel a bit nutty when I say this, but it's true: marijuana is arguably Mother Nature's most impressive botanical accomplishment. Its ability to make people feel good has earned it some enemies among the anti-fun crowd, but that's only one of its many useful properties. You can also make nutritious food out of it, which is a great quality in a plant that grows so resiliently.In this case, innovation was inspired by the drug war, but under other circumstances it's easy for sane people to assume that other noble purposes could be achieved by experimenting (scientifically) with marijuana. It requires great foolishness to miss the point that this magnificent plant is supposed to be used for something.â¦and greater foolishness to think that it can be made to go away.
Heading Down South America Way
Very early on January 12, I will board a plane in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and that night I will be sleeping in a hotel in downtown Lima, Peru. That will be the first of 21 nights in the Drug War Chronicle's Coca Tour 2007, which will take me deep into the indigenous Andean coca heartland (but not to Colombia, where, for the most part, coca production is not tied to ancient tradition but to the global cocaine market).
How Long Can We Avoid Talking About What?
A featured post today on the Huffington Post blog by Josh Sugarmann ask Crime is Back -- How Long Can We Avoid Talking About It? The author, referring to an article in yesterday's Washington Post predicts that crime will make it to back to the front burner in the nation's political agenda. One of the causes is the rise, after a lengthy drop in the number of young males in the population. The Plank, a blog published by The New Republic magazine, also predicts today that crime will figure more prominently in 2008 than in other recent political campaign seasons. That scares me. When crime becomes a political issue, reason and creativity tend to go out the window in favor of tough talk and slogans. The heinous mandatory minimums -- the laws that got Weldon Angelos 55 years, to pick just one case -- were the result of politicos focusing on crime. I seriously doubt that Sugarmann favors that kind of sentencing, aligned as he is with the liberal left. That said, the collective "we" have been avoiding talking one of the most important causes of crime, perhaps the most important, since long before the recent years' crime drop even began: drug prohibition. So long as drugs are illegal, young males (and others) will get recruited by the illicit drug trade, will possess guns as a part of that, and will carry the guns wherever they go. Sometimes they'll use them. Whether crime rises or drops, the violence rate in our society and around the world is dramatically greater than it would be if drugs were legal. All the money that people spend on illicit drugs, hundreds of billions of dollars per year, are going into the criminal underground because of the drug laws. How could that not have a serious increasing effect on violent crime? How much longer can we avoid talking about that? Having mentioned the Huffington Post and the New Republic, I'll point that out that Post published Arianna Huffington is herself a longtime opponent of the drug war, as is New Republic Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan. Whatever else should be done about crime, prohibition must get addressed. A conversation about violence that omits the issue of the drug laws is incomplete.
Can't Handle The Truth?
A new report proving that marijuana is America's number one cash crop has sparked significant interest around the blogoshere, mostly from fair-weather friends of our cause who recognize the absurdity of prohibiting a product of such enduring popularity.Indeed, this news highlights the failure of prohibition, both for failing to eliminate the market, and for driving its value above that of various more popular vegetables.But the fun part is reading what the anti-pot crowd has to say. The most entertaining entry in this regard is from Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias, who cites this story as evidence of a liberal media bias at CNN.
The Best and Worst of 2006?
The year is coming to an end, and it is time to look back at 2006. What did we achieve? What did we fail to achieve? What were the highlights and lowlights for drug policy reform this year? I'm thinking I'll make a pair of feature articles out of this and I hereby invite you to submit your nominations for the best and worst of the year. They can be events, they can be trends...
Read Between the Lines: Why DEA Only Raids Some Dispensaries
Here's the Drug Czar's blog gloating over the DEA's raid of the Local Patient's Cooperative in Hayward, CA:The DEA took down another illegal marijuana dispensary in California. The owners were selling pot for profit under the guise of "medicinal use." Police seized pot cookies and expensive cars. More here (with video).Notice the careful language used here. We're told that this was an "illegal marijuana dispensary" that used medical use as a "guise" to make money. As dispensary raids have increased in recent months, DEA has claimed each time that they're targeting clubs that engage in recreational sales. Similarly, ONDCP's blog post clearly implies that LPC was uniquely criminal in its conduct.In other words, DEA and now ONDCP are tacitly condoning dispensaries that only sell to patients!