Drug WarRant

Russ Belville: A Response to Kevin Sabet’s ‘A Response to Steven Chapman’s ‘The War on Pot: Not a Safe Bet”

An entertaining takedown by Russ Belville. He hits all the top Sabet talking points quite nicely.

Anthony Johnson at National Cannabis Coalition catches this one:

When asked by HuffPost Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim why we keep marijuana illegal, Chabot responded: “Why do we keep heroin, LSD, prostitution, child pornography illegal?”

If Paul Chabot doesn’t know the difference between laws against marijuana and laws against exploiting children to make child porn, then perhaps he needs to be placed on one of those registries.

…

And in case you were wondering, the title of this post refers to child pornography, not marijuana. For what should be obvious reaasons.

http://youtu.be/lVf0xrVMU6A

Clearly the UK is no better at making anti-drug ads than the ONDCP. (Frank, BTW, is essentially the UK equivalent of an ONDCP mascot.)

Check out these others.

This is a comment by Transform’s Steve Rolles in response to a particular article, but it would be appropriate as a response for just about any argument against legalization.

Neil McKeganey’s key concern with legalisation and regulation of drugs appears to be his assumption that use and abuse would rise. This is a legitimate concern, but itself assumes punitive prohibitions are an effective deterrent – the evidence for which is strikingly weak.

McKeganey provides none. Comparisons between countries with different enforcement regimes show no clear pattern, nor is there evidence that increasing penalties decreases use, or vice versa. The influences on drug misuse appear to be mostly social, cultural and economic; with enforcement policy having, at best, a small impact.

And this, of course, is the heart of the matter. After eliminating those whose arguments in favor of criminalization are self-serving, every other argument against legalization boils down to the assumption that legalization, regardless of the levels of regulation involved, necessarily means significantly higher levels of abuse than a criminalization model.

And we are somehow supposed to ignore the fact that after decades of experimentation with criminalization, there is no hard evidence of this supposed fact.

On our side of the argument, on the other hand, are reams of documented evidence of the harms of criminalization.

It’s really a no-brainer.

Owner wins court battle against feds trying to seize his Tewksbury motel

A federal magistrate judge has rejected federal law enforcement officials’ attempt to seize a Tewksbury motel due to drug activity that had taken place there over the years.

“After careful consideration of the evidence, pleadings, and argument of counsel, this Court concludes that the Government has failed to meet its burden of establishing that the Motel is subject to forfeiture,” US Magistrate Judge Judith Dein wrote in a ruling today.

This was one of the textbook cases of outrageous overreach (AKA federal theft of valuable property) in forfeiture, and fortunately, this judge saw through it.

My thanks go to those who represented the Caswells and thereby represented the American people against the corruption of their government.

Brilliant film.

Here’s the bad dysfunctional news: Breaking: In Fight Over Marijuana’s Scheduling, Appeals Court Rules in Favor of DEA and Schedule 1

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. ruled today in favor of the DEA’s decision to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug–a classification for substances that are highly addictive and have no widely accepted medical benefits.

“On the merits, the question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits,” reads the court’s ruling in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. Rather, the court was tasked with deciding whether the DEA was following its own rules in refusing to initiate reschedule proceedings for marijuana.

That’s right. The decision had absolutely nothing to do with whether marijuana had medical benefits or belonged in Schedule 1, but rather whether the DEA had followed its own rules that it created when it decided to protect its own budget by denying reality.

Here’s the good dysfunctional news: Inslee encouraged by pot talk with AG Holder

Inslee said the 45-minute conversation was “very satisfying” and a “confidence-builder” about the state’s ability to move forward implementing legal marijuana. “We went in thinking we should continue with rule-making and nothing I heard should dissuade us,” Inslee said.

At the same time, he stressed that Holder said nothing dispositive about the federal government’s intentions and whether it would crack down on Washington state or look the other way.

OK. Really? Here’s the Governor of a state meeting with the U.S. Attorney General and he can’t even get a clear answer regarding the law? And yet, that’s still better than he expected!

This is dysfunction brought to the heights.

While I’ve always been a fan of libraries, I never spent much time in them, as I tended to like owning books and had computer access at home. Yet for much of the population, libraries are an incredibly important source of literary entertainment and non-TV news.

Local reader Gregg told me this week that he was at the library here in town and noticed that Drug WarRant was blocked by the filtering software. He did the right thing and took it up with the librarian. The librarian took one look at the site and said “There’s no way that should be blocked,” and immediately had it white-listed on the filtering software.

A big thanks to Gregg and the librarian. (If any of you happen to spend time at your local library, take a moment to see if Drug WarRant is available there.)

I’m in the process of cleaning and simplifying my apartment, so I then felt really good about being able to drop off 9 boxes of books as a donation to the library. They were so appreciative and assured me the books would get good use.

Note: To the other Sci-Fi fans here, I still wasn’t ready just yet to part with my 25-30 feet of Sci-Fi paperbacks, so I still have those.

Kevin Sabet, Patrick Kennedy and Project SAM have been trying to convince the public that there’s a false dichotomy pitting the “simplistic” options of incarceration vs. legalization, when, in fact, there should be some kind of moderate third way between those.

They act like “legalization” is the scary extreme point of chaos and anarchy at the far end of the spectrum (See Zelazny’s “Amber” series “The Courts of Chaos”).

Well, I thought it would be a good idea to see if any other human endeavors were “legal,” and, if so, how that worked. Was it simply a structure-less free-for-all, or was it more complicated? Since marijuana is so desperately dangerous (or rather, is desperately claimed to be dangerous by some), I thought it would really be interesting if I could not only find a legal activity, but one that had some dangers of its own.

I actually found eight substances or activities that are already legal (and there may be more)! That’s right, they’re actually legal and there’s been no attempt to find a third way between legalization and incarceration with them. Yet it turns out that, despite some very real (and not overhyped) dangers, there’s a wide range of regulatory options that are used for these within a non-chaotic, non-anarchic legalization system.

Gasoline. Status: legal. Controls: anyone may purchase and posses; strict regulations on manufacturing, storage and transport. Dangers: Very poisonous (even the fumes) and exposure can cause death; highly inflammatory and can be used as a dangerous weapon.

Aspirin. Status: legal. Controls: anyone may purchase over-the-counter and possess; manufacture and labelling regulations. Dangers: Can lead to internal bleeding, stomach ulcers, kidney disfunction, and death.

Sex. Status: legal. Controls: age and relational limits and cultural restrictions. Dangers: addiction; heartbreak that can lead to suicide; sexually transmitted diseases; children.

Strawberries. Status: legal. Controls: anyone may grow, purchase, or posses; agricultural regulations. Dangers: can cause allergic reaction in some people, leading to life-threatening conditions.

Bungee jumping. Status: legal. Controls: varies by state, including equipment safety regulations and licensing. Dangers: gravity.

Home ownership. Status: legal. Controls: anyone may own a home; detailed building, utility, and zoning regulations; heavily taxed (yet somehow does not result in significant black market). Dangers: termites, freeloading relatives, a lifetime of debt.

Convertibles. Status: legal (despite providing no practical advantage over hard-top cars, while presenting increased dangers). Controls: same as other cars. Dangers: Bugs in your teeth, getting nearly decapitated by your scarf (see Isadora Duncan).

Blog reading. Status: legal. Controls: none. Dangers: can lead to being informed and angry about the state of things.

You may be able to come up with more.

So it turns out that there are quite a number of things that are legal, and that legalization is not some kind of extreme option, but rather an entire range of human experiences, with a variety of options of regulating, controlling, and organizing.

Not only that, but it turns out the so-called “third way” — a means of providing help to those who need it — is actually better able to be realized within the extraordinary range of options that is legalization.

Krysten Gwynne in Rolling Stone: Meet the drug warriors working to roll back hard-won advances in marijuana policy.

1. Kevin Sabet
2. Mel and Betty Sembler
3. Michele Leonhart
4. Gil Kerlikowske
5. David Frum

Kevin is going to be insufferably gleeful over this.