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U.S. Admits Failure, Calls Off Opium Eradication in Afghanistan
This is big news:TRIESTE, Italy (Reuters) - Washington is to dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out opium poppy eradication, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan told allies on Saturday.â¦"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," [Richard] Holbrooke told Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy."We are not going to support crop eradication. We're going to phase it out," he said. [Reuters]It's not everyday that a major international drug war program gets the rug pulled out from under it. Only two months ago, the plan was to increase eradication efforts by flooding Afghanistan's major opium producing regions with U.S troops. It was a terrible plan for lots of reasons, thus this sudden reversal is a surprising positive development.Put simply, it appears that the State Dept. was trying to choose between escalating eradication efforts or eliminating them. After weighing their options, they eventually made the right decision. It would be nice to see a similar analysis applied to the war on drugs in its entirety.
Boring Drug War Reporting From the Mainstream Press
Last week, the UN released a major report that, for the first time, acknowledges and condemns the growing movement to legalize drugs, while simultaneously endorsing decriminalization for many drug crimes. No matter what your views on drug policy may be, it's remarkable that the UN is jumping headfirst into the legalization debate. It's equally notable that they're calling on countries around the world to reconsider policies of arresting users for small amounts of drugs.Tragically, however, reporters at the Associated Press and USA Today somehow managed to take this groundbreaking report and turn it into something far less interesting. Both stories focus almost entirely on fluctuations in illicit drug production, which should be perfectly predictable by now to anyone who's followed international drug policy over a period of years. It's worth mentioning, but there's nothing new or exciting about it, particularly in the context of a report that was otherwise overflowing with controversial, politically-charged content.Both stories buried the report's discussion of decriminalization, with USA Today's Donna Leinwand even managing to withhold mention of it until the very last line. What could have been a thought-provoking story about the international drug war leadership calling for fewer drug arrests was instead just another annual accounting of the drug war's progress (or lack thereof).The point here isn't that an avowed partisan such as myself wants more media coverage that's favorable to my views. Of course I do. But my own prejudices notwithstanding, it's just a fact that the political focus of this report was unprecedented and powerfully newsworthy. The document literally begins on its first page with a heated discussion of how controversial the drug war has become, yet AP and USA Today failed to even mention this central theme of the report.It's not a matter of taking sides, but rather simply acknowledging controversy when that's a major dimension of the story. It's in your interest to do this. The vigorous political debate that now surrounds the war on drugs is the easily the most effective angle for attracting readership to your drug policy coverage. Ironically, Leinwand's USA Today piece has links at the top of the page encouraging readers to submit the story to news aggregator sites including Digg and Reddit, which can exponentially increase your traffic. And guess what kinds of stories Digg and Reddit users are looking for. It's hilarious to find USA Today deliberately courting traffic from online communities that are obsessed with drug policy reform, while simultaneously ignoring the hooks that appeal to those audiences. Framing the story around the topics of legalization and decriminalization wouldnât just have been appropriate under the circumstances, it would have made for a better headline, more links, discussion and traffic.If you donât believe me, write the story I'm suggesting and watch it outperform your initial coverage. I dare you.
Marijuana Expo Draws 20,000 to LA Convention Center
Another short video from Mike Gray, for Common Sense for Drug Policy. This one is from Todd McCormick's recent THC Expo in Los Angeles -- as Mike describes it, the "[l]argest marijuana merchandising exhibit in US History," "draw[ing] crowds and exhibitors from all over the world to the Los Angeles Convention Center." This could not happen if marijuana were not basically accepted by society, or a large part of it, despite the retrograde laws that still see thousands arrested daily. View the first video in the series, "Retirees Demand Marijuana," here. In case anyone doesn't know who Mike Gray is, by the way, you should know that he's a distinguished filmmaker and author, whose credits include the late 1970s Jane Fonda-Jack Lemmon-Michael Douglas movie The China Syndrome, as well as extensive work on the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. In drug policy he is well known as author of the book Drug Crazy, possibly the best introduction to the madness of the drug war yet written. (Mike's a member of our advisory board too.)
LEAP Confronts The Drug Czar at a Press Conference
The irony is truly remarkable. Kerlikowske claims legalization isn't in his vocabulary, yet the whole purpose of the press conference is to present a report that discusses legalization at great length. The drug czar's strategy of trying not to legitimize our position is completely at odds with the approach of the UN, thus he ultimately just comes across as unprepared. And that's exactly what he is. He's so unprepared to defend the drug war, he must pretend that legalization doesn't exist. It isn't going to work.Click here to help our friends at LEAP send a message to the UN that it's time to move beyond the war on drugs.
Supreme Court Upholds Fourth Amendment in Strip Search Case
Today, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Safford Unified School District #1 et al v. Redding that school officials violated the 4th Amendment when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl. Savana Redding was subjected to a strip-search that included looking inside her underwear, after school officials received a tip that she might be in possession of prescription Ibuprofen. None was found.By a strong majority, the Court declared the search unreasonable under the 4th Amendment, finding that a full strip search was unjustified based on the nature of the drugs and in question and the absence of specific evidence that contraband would be found in her underwear. Unfortunately, despite upholding the 4th Amendment in this case, the Court left the door wide open for future violations of student rights. The justices agreed by a 7-2 vote that the school officials who carried out the illegal search should not be held liable because the caselaw was unclear at the time. Now that the central legal issues are settled, similar incidents could invoke liability in the future, but the ruling itself will fail to prohibit such searches in many instances. By placing heavy emphasis on the negligible threat posed by prescription Ibuprofen, the Court implies that a different outcome may have been reached depending on the type of contraband in question. It's possible, for example, that the search would have been upheld if it involved marijuana.Thus, today's ruling fails to fully clarify the legality of drug searches in schools under many circumstances. It also fails to punish those responsible for degrading an innocent young woman based on flimsy and ultimately false evidence. Hopefully, however, it will at least serve as a reminder to educators that schools are not a 4th Amendment-free zone.
United Nations Argues for Decriminalization
Despite opening with an attack on legalization, the UN's new World Drug Report 2009 is refreshingly candid about the limitations of the criminal justice approach to drug use. Ryan Grim at Huffington Post notes that the report praises Portugal's decriminalization policy, which is remarkable considering that the UN had previously "suggested the policy was in violation of international drug treaties and would encourage 'drug tourism.'" Attitudes are beginning to change at the UN, as this passage from the report clearly illustrates:At times, drug possession can serve as a pretext to detain an otherwise dangerous or suspect individual, but otherwise, the law must allow for non-custodial alternatives when a police officer stumbles upon small amounts of drugs. It is important that the incident be documented and the opportunity availed to direct the user to treatment if required, but it is rarely beneficial to expend limited prison space on such offenders. According to surveys, between a quarter and a half of the population of many countries in Europe and North America has been in possession of illicit drugs at one time or another in their lives. Most remained productive citizens. In only a small share of these cases would arrest, and the lifelong stigma it brings, have been appropriate.Yes! Stop arresting people for drugs. Good call, guys. This is a pretty straightforward endorsement of decriminalization, and it's exciting to hear this kind of rhetoric coming from the United Nations. Decriminalization won't solve many of the worst consequences of the war on drugs, but ending prohibition is impossible without first establishing a consensus that arresting drug users is bad policy. It looks like this concept is beginning to sink in.
United Nations Admits that Drug Legalization is Gaining Support
For many years now, drug war supporters have relied on a political strategy of pretending that legalization isnât a serious option. Only a crazy person would even consider such a thing, they claim, as exemplified last year by a statement from the UN drug czar that drug policy reformers are a bunch of "lunatics" who are "obviously on drugs." Well, it looks like that's beginning to change. This year's World Drug Report 2009 from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime begins by dedicating its very first page to the idea of legalizing drugs. Of late, there has been a limited but growing chorus among politicians, the press, and even in public opinion saying: drug control is not working. The broadcasting volume is still rising and the message spreading.Much of this public debate is characterized by sweeping generalizations and simplistic solutions. Yet, the very heart of the discussion underlines the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the current approach.What follows is an utterly fact-free attack on the legalization argument, relying on all the typical prohibitionist assumptions we've heard before: use will skyrocket, societies will be thrown into decay, and the decades of drug war progress we've supposedly made will be washed away in a raging torrent of death and despair. It's annoying, to be sure, but it's equally beautiful to behold the sudden desperation and discomfort of the international drug war leadership. They now stand before us, stained and stigmatized by the grand and unambiguous failure of the policies upon which they once proudly placed their names.It is truly a milestone for the drug policy reform movement that the drug war leaders of the world are now decidedly on the defensive.Update: Pete Guither has more over at DrugWarRant.Â
You Don't Need Drug Laws to Punish People Who Steal
The idea that our drug policy should prioritize public health over law enforcement is such common sense that even the drug czar is comfortable saying it. Yet Warren County, OH prosecutor Rachel Hutzel has bravely attempted to refute this emerging conventional wisdom in a perfectly incoherent editorial entitled Many drug offenders need punishment, not just treatment:Many thefts are committed to get drug money. The majority of traffic-related deaths are drug or alcohol-related. And personal crimes such as child endangering and domestic violence are usually fueled by drugs or alcohol.â¦Many drug crimes should continue to be dealt with harshly. The people who are harmed by the selfish, destructive acts of drug users and drug dealers deserve nothing less.Wait, I didn't hear anyone say anything about not punishing thieves, drunk drivers, and child endangerers. I'm pretty sure everyone's in agreement about that. If someone steals, can't you prosecute them for stealing? Am I missing something?The abundance of crimes with actual victims is all the more reason to stop wasting criminal justice resources on people whose only crime was taking a drug that isn't allowed.
Police Raid Innocent Elderly Couple, Blame it on the Weather
Police in Indianapolis burst into the wrong and terrified an elderly couple, but they have an explanation:Officers were trying to serve a warrant for a man wanted on drug charges. The address listed on the paperwork was 4042. The Mintonâs home is 4048, with both house numbers clearly marked.But Major Mark Robinett of the Marion County Sheriffâs Department, who is in charge of warrant sweeps, said he was told that officers had a difficult time reading the addresses because of overcast skies.I've heard a lot of weak excuses for botched drug raids, but this is just classic. As is often the case in such scenarios, the explanation serves only to make police sound even more confused and incompetent than they already did. Seriously, if you can't even see what you're doing, then don't burst into private homes with your guns drawn. A word of advice to the Mintons: you should sue these people silly. The admission that their vision was obstructed at the time of the raid, though utterly disingenuous, is tantamount to gross negligence. I'd just love to see them on the stand trying to explain this.
Police Applaud Themselves For Raiding Innocent People and Killing Dogs
Police in Prince George's County, MD have completed their internal investigation of the botched raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. Their disgusting, though unsurprising, conclusion is that they did a terrific job:The findings of the internal review "are consistent with what I've felt all along: My deputies did their job to the fullest extent of their abilities," Sheriff Michael Jackson said at a news conference.â¦"I'm sorry for the loss of their family pets," Jackson said. "But this is the unfortunate result of the scourge of drugs in our community. Lost in this whole incident was the criminal element. . . . In the sense that we kept these drugs from reaching our streets, this operation was a success." [Washington Post]Except that they could easily have intercepted the package before it was ever delivered, thereby eliminating the need for the violent raid entirely. Killing the dogs was completely unrelated to the goal of intercepting the drugs and it's just supremely dishonest to equate those two outcomes. Radley Balko has more on the fundamental incoherence underlying these latest claims from the PG County Sheriff's Office.In the end, Sheriff Jackson is making a powerful statement to the public: this could happen to you. He's proud of his officers' actions and he has no intention of trying to prevent this from happening again. Cheye Calvo filed a lawsuit today that will hopefully change that.
Marijuana Debate on CNN
Rob Kampia's closing line is right on target. As the debate heats up, we're seeing our opposition desperately invoke the horrors of alcohol and tobacco in a cynical attempt to frame legalization in a familiar and negative context. The simple response is that those drugs are far more dangerous. The harms they cause are only relevant to the discussion insofar as they illustrate the mindless hypocrisy of our marijuana laws. If the most workable alcohol and tobacco policy is legalization, then the same must absolutely be true of marijuana.
Is DEA Illegally Forcing Agents to Serve in Afghanistan?
Interesting piece from McClatchy:WASHINGTON â As the Obama administration ramps up the Drug Enforcement Administration's presence in Afghanistan, some special-agent pilots contend that they're being illegally forced to go to a combat zone, while others who've volunteered say they're not being properly equipped.In interviews with McClatchy, more than a dozen DEA agents describe a badly managed system in which some pilots have been sent to Afghanistan under duress or as punishment for bucking their superiors.They're suing and it will be interesting to see how this turns out. Their argument is that DEA agents are technically civilians and can only be sent into a war zone voluntarily. Makes sense to me. Of course, I'm sympathetic to any argument that begins with "the DEA shouldnât be doing thisâ¦"
Undercover Trooper commits suicide after my husbands trial, Corruption in a small town
There was a life that was lost due to the trial of my husbands and several others. the corrupt police in a small town in upstate ny who are racially motivated.
Mac attack
I was playing poker about a week ago and after about 8 beers and half a mickey of rum I whacked the computer table after losing with a boat to a straight flush.It was about the 15th such hand in the s
Cannabis Debate At FOX KMPH
I often post cannabis news on the KMPH Community Correspondent website, and lately there have been some interesting and almost comical responses to my posts.
FOX News Says Marijuana Will Eat Your Soul
Or something like that. It's amazing what passes for science when it comes to selling scare stories about pot. You could send these people a press release saying that marijuana has been proven to increase your chances of turning into a lizard and they would publish something about it immediately. I guarantee it. It would never occur to them that there are no lizard people.
The Feds Are Giving Themselves New Drug War Powers
You see, the reason the drug war is going so badly is because it needs more power:WASHINGTON (AP) â U.S. immigration agents soon will get expanded powers to fight Mexican drug cartels, Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Wednesday.Elephants? If he gave them elephants, I'd be impressed for once. But actually it's a little more mundane than that:Under a new deal aimed at settling a long-running turf dispute with the Drug Enforcement Administration, more agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would get authority to investigate drug cases.Hell, they should give me the authority to investigate drug cases, because I see suspicious stuff going down on the streets of D.C. all the time. Of course, if the feds in Washington can't even win the drug war that's happening right under their nose, you gotta wonder why they think more drug investigations are going to change anything at the border.
Sharks Filled With Cocaine!!!
It was really just a matter of time if you think about it:The lengths to which drug smugglers will go to conceal their consignments was revealed when the Mexican navy said it had seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen shark carcasses.Masked naval officers cut open more than 20 carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a cargo ship in a container port in the state of Yucatan. [The Guardian]Maybe the drug traffickers should train live sharks to smuggle cocaine, because that would be awesome and nobody would mess with them. Actually, if the drug war continues long enough, it's statistically probable that it will happen. Regardless, this is another one of those crazy stories that just shows how ridiculous the drug war has become. Things like this arenât supposed to happen, and if our drug policy made any sense, they wouldn't.
How Many Innocent People Are in Jail on Drug Charges?
It's a question I've often pondered and one that anybody with strong opinions about drug policy should consider, regardless of where you stand on the issue. Surely, there exists no realistic formula with which to approximate an answer, but one need only observe and understand what the drug war is and how it works to know that grave injustices are forever embedded into the drug war equation. The question resurfaced this week in an AP report that tells the story of Jose and Maximo Colon. The brothers were arrested and charged with cocaine distribution stemming from an alleged encounter with undercover officers in a sketchy NY bar. The case imploded when surveillance tape from the establishment revealed that the pair had simply not committed the crime or even interacted with the agents. They were arrested moments later by a back-up team, without a clue as to the reason why. Worse still, an outdoor camera captured footage of the undercover investigators "literally dancing down the street" afterwards, apparently pleased with their accomplishment. It's a striking and gratuitous example of police misconduct to be sure, but the larger question is how many similar cases have led to convictions and prison time for their victims:Jose quickly got the tape to defense attorney Rochelle Berliner, a former narcotics prosecutor. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.''I almost threw up,'' she said. ''Because I must've prosecuted 1,500, 2,000 drug cases ... and all felonies. And I think back, Oh my God, I believed everything everyone told me. Maybe a handful of times did something not sound right to me. I don't mean to sound overly dramatic but I was like, sick.''If it were only possible somehow to reveal the full scope of wrongful, fraudulent convictions in the war on drugs, I don't doubt that the entire nation would be stunned and sickened. Yet, for anyone who's paying attention, it's not necessary to fantasize about the true extent of injustice and corruption that the drug war has unleashed on innocent people. You can read about it in the newspaper all the time.In Ohio, we saw a DEA agent indicted for helping frame 17 innocent people. In Atlanta, we saw police plant drugs in the home of an innocent 88-year-old woman after shooting her to death. In Tulia, TX we saw a rogue narcotics officer frame and arrest most of the black people in town. In Hearne, TX we saw the same damn thing. And across the country, we've seen dozens of innocent people who might well have ended up in prison if they hadn't been killed first by the police who raided their homes.Behind all of this lies a matrix of perverse incentives, loose evidentiary requirements, and diminished accountability mechanisms that make mind-blowing miscarriages of justice more than inevitable. A central element of modern drug enforcement involves the use of informants, who trade information on other people for leniency in their own criminal cases. They have every incentive to lie and they do so constantly, as we've seen over and over again. Prosecutors offer leniency in exchange for "substantial assistance" in helping convict others, a practice that inherently favors the guiltiest party. Inevitably, those most directly involved in a criminal conspiracy are armed with names and other critical details that prosecutors crave, while peripheral players and innocent bystanders who become entangled in drug investigations are placed at a remarkable disadvantage.Of course, it shouldn't be necessary to persuade anyone that our drug laws are designed to make things easy for police and hard for criminal suspects. These vast drug war powers are bestowed on police and prosecutors by legislators who are eager to provide law-enforcement with every necessary tool in the fight against crime. That much power creates countless innocent casualties even at the hands of our most honest public servants, and it's a nightmare when passed along to corrupt cops like the men who framed the Colon brothers. Yet, when these dramatic fiascoes get exposed, police can often be found downplaying it and insisting that you can't fight the drug war without these sorts of aggressive and dirty tactics. If that's even remotely true, then the war on drugs is just far too filthy and corrupt to tolerate in a free and civil society.
Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Are Coming to Rhode Island
It's official:PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The House and Senate on Tuesday each overrode Governor Carcieri's veto of legislation allowing three "compassion centers" to dispense medical marijuana.The Senate vote was 35 to 3. The House vote was unanimous, 67 to 0.For the bill to become law, both houses were required to overide the veto of their own and the other house's bill. The measure is now in effect.It's just inspiring to see an entire state legislature stand up in unison to protect patients. Carcieri's veto was driven by the same petty, false, and widely-refuted propaganda that's been deployed in desperation against medical marijuana legislation for more than a decade now:In vetoing the bills, Carcieri said he thought "the increased availability, along with a complacent attitude, will no doubt result in increased usage, and will negatively impact the children of Rhode Island" and complicate the jobs of law enforcement officers.Think about how remarkable it is that virtually the entire House and Senate of Rhode Island have come forth and firmly rejected this garbage. There was a time when reformers were all alone on this issue, yet today it is our opposition that stands isolated and estranged from public opinion.The folks at the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition deserve a big round of applause for taking on this battle and winning by knockout.