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Room for Debate on Mexico's Drug Decriminalization Law
The New York Times "Room for Debate" blog has a series of comments on Mexico's new decriminalization law. Will it reduce violence, or police corruption? Will increase drug use? Is it really a decriminalization law? Former foreign minister of Mexico Jorge Castaneda is among the participants. Check it out . Also of interest today, Mary O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal on "Mexico's Hopeless Drug War." O'Grady points out that "[p]rohibition and demand make otherwise worthless weeds valuable," arguing that neither the decrim law nor Calderon's ongoing drug war will reduce the violence. Via Tony Newman...
Exit Strategies for the War on Drugs, Part I: Framing the Discussion
(Glen Stark has provided the first installment in a multi-part discussion about the challenges we'll have when crafting a post-prohibition system. We thought it was interesting enough to post to our home page. - Dave) I am gradually of the opinion that drug-policy reform is now a sure thing, and the discussion will need to shift to alternative policies. This is the first in a multi-part series, in which I prattle on about what comes next after the war on drugs. This post attempts to formulate a useful basis for the discussion of the subject. The following is available in full, in correct formatting, here. The Guardian has an excellent article: Prohibition's failed. Time for a new drugs policy. The first line sums it up perfectly "http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/editorial-drugs-policy-latin-america". It's clear that the debate now needs to be about what comes next. We've created a stupid war against the citizenry our own country. It's completely fucking up our civil liberties, and in fact the entire premise is completely unconstitutional. Argentina's government has realized this, and if we lived in a healthier democracy, we would have figured out the same thing by now. The good news is we seem to be getting there, so the time for figuring out an exit strategy would seem to be now. The issues aren't simple. We have a monstrous police-state machinery in place. We have to pull out the troops and integrate them back into society, and provide them with counselling to reintegrate them into normal society. While this should be an easy sell, as there is a peace-dividend (reduced spending on law-enforcement and prisons, improved civil liberties, reduced crime...) the drug-warriors don't want to give up sucking at the government teat, and form a powerful lobby. The most difficult question of course is "okay, prohibition doesn't work, what now?". Unfortunately, the people who should be working on this are still too afraid to admit prohibition has failed. While they get up to speed, the most productive discussions in this arena are taking place online, in in the periphery of other discussions. I'd like to discuss the issue more directly. Goals: So, let's identify some (hopefully) uncontroversial goals, by which we can judge whether a drug policy is working or not. minimize addiction rates. minimize overdose deaths. protect children and uninformed consumers. minimize crime (e.g. junkies stealing to get their 'fix') There are other effects which are more difficult to quantify, such as health impacts (cancer and such) and effects on productivity. While these are worth considering, I think it's a reasonable approach to consider them second-order effects. Once we have a policy which optimizes the easily measured first-order effects, we can worry about the second order ones. The key thing to keep in mind here is prohibition is a nightmarish failure, regardless of which effects you consider. It doesn't accomplish any of the desired effects. The results of prohibition are so disastrously bad, that complete deregulation might end up working just as well, without the enormous cost (socially and economically) of funding the war. An error the drug warriors make is framing the discussion in terms of "zero-tolerance". They want to completely eliminate all drug use. What the last 100 years has shown is that that won't happen. You can keep spending more money, you can keep use the constitution as toilet paper after shitting on people's civil rights, you can get more and more violent and intolerant, you can impose increasingly draconian laws, and people will still use drugs. The figures are there. It takes enormous cognitive dissonance to deny them, so let's stop doing There remains of course the question of how much we are willing to pay to achieve those goals. I suspect that the people who are so willing to spend billions on the drug war, will be less willing to spend the same billions on counselling, care, rehabilitation, education, and maintenance programs. Fortunately, the drug war has been so damned expensive, anything we come up with likely be much more effective at a greatly reduced financial cost. This will allow us to frame all such harm reduction spending in terms of savings over the prohibitionist approach. Having identified a set of goals which I hope we can all agree on, let us consider what will be needed to implement a sane drug policy. It's my conviction that a good drug policy will involve the following components. Rational evaluation of drug harm. Honest drug education. Honest drug scheduling (a rational classification system). A sane handling of the respective classes of drugs. Reality based assessment of policy effects. More power to states and communities for deciding drug policies. Each of these points is non-trivial, and will require some discussion. Thus they will be the subject of future posts. Some might disagree with necessity of a drug scheduling system at all, and would advocate regulating all drugs like we do alcohol. While I see some merits to such an extremely libratarian approach, I would argue against pursuing such a goal for the following reasons: It's unrealistic in today's political climate, it's too rapid and extreme a change, and I suspect such a policy might be nearly as harmful as the current policy. If it's not clear to me, it's going to be extremely unpalatable for the average citizen. Keeping the classification system allows to handle the approach in a more reasonable and rationed manner. We can agree to pursue a policy that accomplished the stated goals, and analyse each drug case by case, based on a rational assessment of its relative harm, made by qualified medical researchers. It also allows us to separate the questions "do we need drug policy reform", and "what is a good drug policy for drug X". The answer to the former question is simple, the answer to the latter is, in some cases, rather difficult. For example, I am torn on what constitutes a good policy for Heroin or Crack (I do know that current American policies are the wrong answer, but I'm not sure heroin and crack bars are the right answer). Conclusion and caveats: To successfully advocate for drug policy reform, I think keeping the above goals in mind is extremely useful. It provides a concrete, uncontroversial framework for evaluating the failure of current policy, and provides some useful indications for steps in a positive direction. There may be additional goals which are useful to bring into the discussion, but in the terrible situation we currently find ourselves in, we should strive to work toward unifying, uncontroversial goals. Once these are acheived, we can open up more controversial, difficult discussions, such as "what right does the government have telling me what I can put in my body anyway", or the ethical merits of a drug-free lifestyle versus the spiritual benefits of psychotropic drugs.
Prominent Drug Warrior Admits Anti-Drug Propaganda is Exaggerated
I donât know what to make of this quote from NIDA Director Nora Volkow: "One of the issues that's happened is that we've sent out all these messages; we've cried wolf too many times," Volkow said. "We don't need to exaggerate; the data speaks for itself. Armed with this knowledge, kids can make decisions." [San Diego Union-Tribune]At first glance, it's nice that she at least admits that there's a lot of nonsense being passed around by anti-drug crusaders. It's not exactly news to anyone, but hearing this from Nora Volkow still surprised me. Anything resembling candor coming from a longtime prohibitionist like her is worthy of recognition.Unfortunately, it's hard to take any of this seriously given Volkow's extensive track record of making crazy exaggerations. After the encounter I had with her, she really shouldn't be lecturing anyone about not crying wolf. More likely, Volkow simply appreciates that being associated with crazy and excessive propaganda has done immeasurable harm to the credibility of the drug warrior elite and their prohibitionist agenda. If there's one lesson worth taking away from the drug war politics of the Bush era, it's that nobody wants to hear that crap anymore. Distancing herself from the excesses of her fallen peers is a smooth move for Volkow, but it won't work unless she actually stops trying to scare and manipulate everyone about the harms of drugs.
How Much More Proof Do You Need That Lying About Marijuana Doesnât Work?
No matter how many lies they tell, no matter how many lives they rip apart, the brave soldiers in the war on drugs wake up everyday in a country where marijuana is part of a healthy lifestyle for millions of responsible adults:In 2002, 94.9 million Americans admitted having used marijuana at some point in their lives. In 2008, that figure had grown to 102.4 million. In percentage terms, thatâs an increase from 40.4 percent in 2002 to 40.6 percent in 2008 â unchanged, statistically speaking. [MPP]For all the insulting, outlandish, and just plain stupid propaganda that the drug czar's office has been shoving down our throats, nothing has changed. Nothing, that is, except public support for legalization, which continues to climb.The drug czar hasn't said a word about the latest data on drug use rates, and it's fitting that the smartest strategic move to come from that office in a long time was the decision to just keep their mouths shut for once.
Resignation of Mexico's Attorney General Won't Change Much
I have an invited comment online at JURIST, explaining why the resignation of Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora won't change much. (Hint: It's Prohibition.) JURIST, which is published at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, is "the world's only law school-based comprehensive legal news and research service," according to its FAQ. It's also free, archives included. I've already added it to my Google Reader.
Insane Hospital Worker Punishes Medical Marijuana Patient
This is so out-of-control, I just don't know where to begin. If you watch one video this year of a seriously ill medical marijuana patient getting tortured by idiots, make it this one:Someone should remind these people they live in Canada. The guy gets his marijuana sent to him by the government. He's not some punk kid partying behind the dumpster. As far as we've come in the fight for medical marijuana, there remain countless individual battles that must be overcome before patients who need this medicine can count on being treated with fairness, compassion, and equality. Anyone who would deny medicine to the sick is a monster, to be sure. But the responsibility for this doesn't end there. We've endured decades of deliberate lies and propaganda about marijuana spread by our own public servants and it's no surprise that many among us have had their humanity and common sense compromised. It will take just as long to correct it all and events like this, disturbing as they may be, are an important part of the process. In the meantime, here's a Google page for the Brook Haven Care Centre in Kelowna, BC, where this incident took place. You can write them a review, send a letter, or even give them a call. The patient's name is Nyle Nagy and the manager who punished him is named Adrien Vaughan. Feel free to share your concerns. I'm sure Nyle would also appreciate receiving personal letters of support.Update: This link offers a different perspective on the situation from someone claiming to a member of Nyle Nagy's family. If this additional information is true, and it sounds authentic to me, then the Brookhaven Care Home doesn't deserve as much criticism as they've received. If I had seen this prior to writing the post, I would have approached it differently.
Bison Will Eat Marijuana Grown on Contaminated Chemical Weapons Site
Aaron Houston at MPP is supposed to be this badass lobbyist (I heard he could recognize every single member of Congress and he even got to be on The Colbert Report), but the story tips he sends me are never anything important. It's always some crazy stuff like this:COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (CBS) Military marijuana? The U.S. Army planned to cover a chemical weapons site with grass and weed â but not the kind of grass and weed that's actually cropping up â the kind that's illegal.â¦The military blames the supplier for the snafu, saying the mulch for ground cover was purchased from a place in Kansas where the low-grade weed is common.â¦The Army made the first discovery of hemp on the property in June. So far they've picked about 100 plants that Scharmin says are low-grade. He says they plan to mow, burn or maybe even have bison eat the rest."Fish and Wildlife Service does not seem to have any concern about having bison out there," Scharmin says.This sounds like a horrible place. The soil is contaminated from chemical weapons testing. They have bison (which are not cows. They will kick your ass). And there's free weed, but it sucks.It's like the island from Lost. They should do a movie about this, where some hippies hear there's pot growing on a secret army base, so they sneak in there and then get terrorized by insane radioactive buffaloes that get you stoned when they burp.
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
by Bernd Debusmann, Jr. Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 4,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high- profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war: Friday , September 4 Troops arrested three suspected cartel assassins in Ciudad Juarez. The three are thought to be part of La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel. Between them, they are accused of having participated in 70 killings. A high ranking police official was gunned down in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The commander, Ubaldo Dominguez Grijalva, was shot by at least two gunmen outside his house at 6:30 AM. Fifteen days ago, he was involved in an operation in which three suspected cartel hitmen were arrested after a firefight in Los Mochis. Saturday , September 5 Mexican troops captured a suspect in the September 2nd killing of 17 patients in Ciudad Juarez drug rehabilitation center. The suspect, Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, is a high-ranking member of the Juarez cartel. He is also on the DEAâs list of most wanted fugitives on suspicion of being involved in marijuana and cocaine trafficking to the United States. A former high ranking official of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US. The man, Richard P. Kramer, had previously been stationed in Mexico. He was apparently convinced by drug cartel members to retire and begin working for them directly. Kramer is accused of information from law enforcement databases concerning possible informants, and with being involved in a 660 pound cocaine shipment which traveled from Panama to the United States, before being finally seized in Spain in 2007. Sunday , September 6 Gunmen killed a state legislative candidate, his wife, and their two children at their home in Tabasco. Authorities originally suspected that the murders were carried out by drug traffickers angered by recent arrests. Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, 43, a former university professor, had begun his campaign just one day prior to his murder. Mr.Esperon and his wife were both shot, while the children, ages 8 and 10, were asphyxiated. Monday, September 7 An arrest was made in the killing of Juan Francisco Fuentes Esperon, the state legislative candidate murdered over the weekend (see above). Police arrested several young men in what apparently was a burglary gone wrong. Interestingly, however, the Zetas drug trafficking organization took the unusual step of publicly distancing itself from the murders. The Zetas hung a banner in Villahermosa, the state capital, saying they were not involved. Seven people were gunned down in several separate incidents in Ciudad Juarez. Four of the victims were killed at a motel, and included an ex-US soldier who lived in El Paso and worked for the Postal Service. The men were drinking when they were attacked by heavily armed gunmen. In another incident, a man was killed and five people wounded when gunmen entered a private party and began shooting. Tuesday, September 8 Mexico replaced its attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, who had held the position for nine years. President Calderon gave no reason for the move. He is slated to be replaced by Arturo Chavez Chavez, who had previously worked for the state attorney generalâs office of Chihuahua, of which Ciudad Juarez is capital. He is likely to face a tough nomination battle in Mexicoâs congress, as the decision has been criticized because of his work in Chihuahua. During his tenure there from 1992-1996, the Juarez cartel became much stronger and the murders of hundreds of women went unsolved.
Europe: Dutch Government Wants âMembers Onlyâ Cannabis Coffee Shops
In a letter leaked to Dutch media, three key Dutch ministers wrote that the government wants to maintain the countryâs famous cannabis coffee shop system, but that they should be âmembers onlyâ so they will no longer attract foreign âdrug tourists.â The ministers of justice, home affairs, and health wrote that reducing drug tourism and reducing the number of coffee shops would help reduce crime and public nuisances associated with them. Border town coffee shops in particular have been inundated with pot smokers from neighboring countries with more repressive policies, hordes of which have led to complaints of everything from traffic congestion to public urination to other drug dealing. The other criminality associated with the coffee shops comes from Hollandâs half-baked policy of tolerance of retail cannabis sales and possession while continuing to prohibit the licit growing of cannabis to supply those shops. While the government was expected to issue a position paper on changing the coffee shop policy later this fall, Tuesdayâs leaked letter provides a clear indication of where the government is heading: toward âmembers onlyâ coffee shops. While discriminating by nationality within the European Union would violate EU law, it appears the Dutch government will try to bar foreigners by requiring a Dutch bank card to purchase cannabis. According to the letter, the ministers are also open to experimenting with allowing coffee shops to stock larger quantities of the herb. Currently, shops can keep only 500 grams on hand, resulting in a network of drug runners scurrying about Dutch cities and towns with fresh cannabis supplies.
Will Foster is Back in Prison in Oklahoma and Needs Your Help
Will Fosterâs nightmarish saga continues. Foster, you may recall, is the medical marijuana patient who was sentenced to 93 years in prison for growing a few plants in 1997. Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign by Stopthedrugwar.org, Fosterâs sentence was eventually reduced to 20 years, and he was paroled to California. After three years on parole, California officials decided Foster no longer needed supervision, but Oklahoma officials disagreed. When Foster was arrested in California for driving on an Oklahoma driversâ license, Oklahoma issued a parole violation extradition warrant, but Foster filed a successful writ of habeas corpus to quash that warrant. Then, last year, Foster was arrested on bogus marijuana cultivation charges--those California charges were dropped after he spent a year in jail--and Oklahoma again sought his extradition as a parole violator. Oklahoma officials took Foster from the Sonoma County Jail in California, and he is now residing in prison in Oklahoma until 2011--or 2015, as Oklahoma parole officials are now claiming. In Oklahoma, the governor ultimately decides on whether to revoke parole or not. Foster had an administrative hearing Tuesday, which unsurprisingly found he had indeed violated his parole (by refusing to sign paperwork agreeing that his sentence had been extended). An executive hearing will take place sometime in the next one to three months, then that decision goes to the governor for approval or rejection. Foster and his supporters are urging the public to write to the parole board to ask it to recommend pardoning him or commuting his sentence, and to write or call the governor asking for the same thing. Key points: * Foster is a non-violent medical marijuana patient seriously ill with rheumatoid arthritis; * Foster plans to return to California and never set foot in Oklahoma again; * The after-the-fact extension of his sentence from 2011 to 2015 is unfair and unwarranted; * It does not make fiscal or budgetary sense for the state of Oklahoma to spend thousands of scarce public dollars to incarcerate Foster again for this non-violent offense. I just spoke to the parole office in Oklahoma, and they donât yet have the information in their system required to send letters to parole board members, so instead, fax your concise, respectful letters to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board at (405) 602-6437. Mention Fosterâs full name, William Joseph Foster, and his prisoner number, ODOC #252271. Fax your letter to Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry at (405) 521-3353 or, better yet, call his office at (405) 521-2342. In either case, mention Fosterâs full name and prisoner number, and be polite. Drug War Chronicle will continue following Fosterâs saga. Look for a feature article on the latest twists and turns on Friday.
Marijuana: Arizona Supreme Court Rejects Religious Freedom Claim
Arizonaâs law protecting religious freedom does not apply to a man convicted of smoking marijuana while driving, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling came in Church of Cognizance, an Arizona-based religion that says it embraces neo-Zoroastrian tenets and uses marijuana for spiritual enlightenment. He argued that Arizonaâs 1999 law limiting the stateâs ability to "burden the exercise of religion" meant he could not be prosecuted because he was exercising his religious beliefs. The trial judge disagreed, and Hardesty was convicted. He appealed to the state Supreme Court, and has now lost there, too. In a unanimous opinion, the justices held that while the state religious freedom law mandates restrictions on religious practices only if it shows a compelling interest and that the restrictions must be the "least restrictive means of furthering that interest," the state does have a compelling interest in regulating marijuana use and Hardestyâs claim that the Church of Cognizance allows him to use marijuana anywhere or any time, including driving, made it clear that the "least restrictive means" was an outright ban on marijuana. Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch, who authored the opinion, made a distinction between federal laws that allow Native American Church members to use peyote without fear of prosecution under state law and the religious freedom claim made by Hardesty. There was an "obvious difference" between the two situations, Berch said. "Members of the Native American Church assert only the religious right to use peyote in limited sacramental rights. Hardesty asserts the right to use marijuana whenever he pleases, including while driving,'' she wrote. Mondayâs ruling was the second defeat in as many years for the church. Last year, church founders Dan and Mary Quaintance were convicted of marijuana possession and conspiracy to distribute marijuana after being stopped with 172 pounds of pot in New Mexico. A federal judge in New Mexico rejected their religious freedom arguments. Dan Quaintance is currently serving a five year prison sentence, and Mary Quaintance is doing two to three years.
Advocacy Anti-patterns
Software developers study anti-patterns. The practice can be applied to advocating social change, i.e. fighting the drug war.
Confused Drug Warrior Predicts "The End of Medical Marijuana"
John English at The Examiner has penned an impressive archive of unhinged anti-drug angriness, and although there's a strong case to be made for ignoring him, his piece "The law and the end of medical marijuana" was just too cute to pass up. He really believes medical marijuana is going to go away:Another issue is that physicians who recommend marijuana as "medicinal" have recently become at risk of lawsuits. This is the issue that will, no doubt, bring doctors' recommendation of "medical marijuana" to an end. It will come as "medical marijuana patients" understand that they have been injured due to marijuana use and seek out lawyers.Isn't that precious? People "injured" by one of the safest drugs on the planet. I'm afraid if you want someone to get "injured" by medical marijuana and sue their doctor, you might have to do it yourself. In the process, you may inadvertently find a cure for obsessive drug war zealotry. Medical marijuana makes people healthier and happier, as the massive and growing number of patients will eagerly attest. If it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. You see, medical marijuana laws don't mandate that sick people ingest potent cannabis against their will. The whole point here is that patients want this option and they've fought, sometimes literally from their deathbeds, to get it. The failure of medical marijuana's opponents to understand or care what patients want is their central fault and it explains perfectly why their arguments and calculations have served them so poorly.
Confused Drug Warrior Thinks Drugs Are Legal in Mexico
It's sad how often opposition to simple reforms is characterized by fundamental factual ignorance. Here's T. Michael Andrews, a former senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, freaking out about something that hasn't actually happened:Mexico's recent decision to legalize hard drugs, including methamphetamines, cocaine, LSD and heroin, sends the wrong message to its citizen and to the international law-enforcement community.â¦Mexico's recent decision sends up the white flag in its commitment to stopping drugs from imploding in its country and says yes to continued trafficking into the United States. [Arizona Daily Star]The thing is, drugs aren't legal in Mexico. They're just not. This isn't a matter of opinion. All they did was get rid of criminal penalties for possessing (not selling) very small amounts. It's usually referred to a decriminalization and even the U.N. is down with it. It's possible, of course, that Andrews is merely trying to sensationalize the issue by conflating decriminalization with the more-controversial concept of legalization. But he straight-up insists that "Mexico will now become the vacation destination for all drug users," as though they're on the verge of opening coffeeshops for heroin. I honestly doubt whether this guy even understands how Mexico's new drug law works, which means the Arizona Daily Star made a bad call by giving him a forum for complaining about it. You can send them a polite note by clicking here.
What Would You Do If You Found a Giant Bag of Weed at the Beach?
I'm sure the readers of this blog could all be counted on to do the right thing:Satellite Beach police are asking beachgoers to report any suspicious packages found along the shore following the weekend discovery of a brick of marijuana near Hightower Beach Park."Just report it, leave it alone and call the police," said Cmdr. Jeff Pearson of the Satellite Beach Police Department. [FloridaToday]Yeah right. I'm sure they get calls all the time from concerned surfer dudes who found huge bags of weed and donât know what to do. Apparently, the ocean is filled with random drugs:Police say illegal drugs washing up on the beach happens occasionally as smugglers dump their illicit cargo into the Atlantic Ocean to escape detection from authorities."It's pretty common. We live on the beach in Florida and it happens," Pearson said.And you can bet that authorities never even hear about a lot of it, because quick-thinking citizens take responsibility for disposing of the drugs on their own. Heroes.Really though, this is just another one of those mind-numbingly absurd phenomena that would never occur if our drug policy didnât completely suck. It requires an epic and sustained campaign of monumental idiocy to create circumstances under which events like this take place routinely. If a smelly dead fish floats ashore, that's one thing, but when large stashes of illegal drugs are just bobbing around in the ocean, it's perfectly symbolic of the enormous mess the drug war has left in its wake.
10 Rules for Dealing with Police
Many of our readers are familiar with the widely-viewed film Busted: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters, produced by the organization Flex Your Rights. The next Flex movie, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, is set to come out before the end of the year. Filming took place in Baltimore a couple of weeks ago, and it is now in editing. Click here to check out photos; it really is looking pretty nice. narrated by the famous attorney William "Billy" H. Murphy, Jr.
Pain Activist Facing Fines in Free Speech Case
The government's war against pain doctors hit a new low last spring, when federal prosecutor Tanya Treadway, busy prosecuting Kansans Steve and Linda Schneider, subpoenaed pain control advocate Siobhan Reynolds for information on the Pain Relief Network's (PRN) public advocacy in support of the Schneiders. Despite ACLU efforts to quash the subpoena as an attempt to shut down free speech, judge US District Judge Julie Robinson allowed it. Friday, according an update from Jacob Sullum on Reason, Robinson imposed a $200/day civil contempt fine on both Reynolds and PRN, to begin in 10 days if she does not comply with the subpoena. An appeal is planned -- stay tuned. Earlier in the week, Boston-based civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate criticized Treadway in a column in Forbes magazine. We reprint a few paragraphs, also via Sullum: When Reynolds wrote op-eds in local newspapers and granted interviews to other media outlets, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway attempted to impose a gag order on her public advocacy. The district judge correctly denied this extraordinary request. Undeterred, Treadway filed on March 27 a subpoena demanding a broad range of documents and records, obviously hoping to deter the peripatetic pain relief advocate, or even target her for a criminal trial of her own. Just what was Reynolds' suspected criminal activity? "Obstruction of justice" is the subpoena's listed offense being investigated, but some of the requested records could, in no possible way, prove such a crime. The prosecutor has demanded copies of an ominous-sounding "movie," which, in reality, is a PRN-produced documentary showing the plight of pain physicians. Also requested were records relating to a billboard Reynolds paid to have erected over a busy Wichita highway. It read: "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone." Suddenly, a rather ordinary exercise in free speech and political activism became evidence of an obstruction of justice.
A Drug War Carol
Very Nice Work.I found it years ago .It's all the history in cartoons. Perfect Draws and script.
Flabbergasted
I'm still flabbergasted by a friend saying that he was "morally opposed to marijuana use".