Drug WarRant

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.

Mark Kleiman is 100% correct.

Programming note: Eugene Jarecki’s documentary about over-incarceration in the United States and the drug war is the video of the week on iTunes and so is available this week only for a 99 cent rental.

The House I Live In

As America remains embroiled in conflict overseas, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families, and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. Over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for more than 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer, and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever before. Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s longest war, offering a definitive portrait and revealing its profound human rights implications.

While recognizing the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have meant it is more often treated as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast machine that feeds largely on America’s poor, and especially on minority communities. Beyond simple misguided policy, The House I Live In examines how political and economic corruption have fueled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.

Glenn Greenwald continues to be one of the most important political writers we have, shining a glaring light on the corruption, abuses, and overreach of government. Today he talks about the Aaron Swartz case, but even more importantly, the overall stench that runs throughout our Justice system when it comes to prosecutorial abuse.

Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann: accountability for prosecutorial abuse

To begin with, there has been a serious injustice in the Swartz case, and that alone compels accountability. Prosecutors are vested with the extraordinary power to investigate, prosecute, bankrupt, and use the power of the state to imprison people for decades. They have the corresponding obligation to exercise judgment and restraint in how that power is used. When they fail to do so, lives are ruined – or ended.

The US has become a society in which political and financial elites systematically evade accountability for their bad acts, no matter how destructive. Those who torture, illegally eavesdrop, commit systemic financial fraud, even launder money for designated terrorists and drug dealers are all protected from criminal liability, while those who are powerless – or especially, as in Swartz’s case, those who challenge power – are mercilessly punished for trivial transgressions. All one has to do to see that this is true is to contrast the incredible leniency given by Ortiz’s office to large companies and executives accused of serious crimes with the indescribably excessive pursuit of Swartz.

This immunity for people with power needs to stop. The power of prosecutors is particularly potent, and abuse of that power is consequently devastating. Prosecutorial abuse is widespread in the US, and it’s vital that a strong message be sent that it is not acceptable. Swartz’s family strongly believes – with convincing rationale – that the abuse of this power by Ortiz and Heymann played a key role in the death of their 26-year-old son. It would be unconscionable to decide that this should be simply forgotten.

The issue permeates every aspect of our society.

All the statistics are well known at this point. The US imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in the world, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. Despite having only roughly 5% of the world’s population, the US has close to 25% of the world’s prisoners in its cages. This is the result of decades of a warped, now-bipartisan obsession with proving “law and order” bona fides by advocating for ever harsher and less forgiving prison terms even for victimless “crimes”.

The “drug war” is the leading but by no means only culprit. The result of this punishment-obsessed justice approach is not only that millions of Americans are branded as felons and locked away, but that the nation’s racial minorities are disproportionately harmed. As the conservative writer Michael Moynihan detailed this morning in the Daily Beast, there is growing bipartisan recognition “the American criminal justice system, in its relentlessness and inflexibility, its unduly harsh sentencing guidelines, requires serious reexamination.” As he documents, prosecutors have virtually unchallengeable power at this point to convict anyone they want.

Ricardo Cortés discusses The condemned coca leaf and the two standards that have existed: One for a major soft drink, another for the native people of South America.

You see, the Single Convention was adopted after years of negotiations led in great part by Harry J. Anslinger, long-time commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Best known today for his fervent campaign against marijuana, Anslinger had a strange relationship with the coca plant: spearheading its prohibition while simultaneously ensuring access to the leaf for a single, powerful consumer, The Coca-Cola Company.

For decades leading up to the signing of the Single Convention, Anslinger worked closely with Coca-Cola to procure a decocainized coca extract for the “secret formula” of the beverage. Cooperating with The Coca-Cola Company and Maywood executives, Anslinger was also their central ally in negotiations leading to the completion of the Single Convention agreement.

Indeed, as it was finally adopted, in addition to banning traditional use of coca leaves, the treaty contains a provision that allows use of the plant for the special purposes of The Coca-Cola Company.

Cortés is the author of “A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola”

Molly Davies: A Letter to the President: My Husband Is Not the “Bigger Fish to Fry” in Your Drug War

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to you as a wife and mother of two young daughters, whose 34-year old husband, Matthew Davies, faces 10 years or more in federal prison for providing medical marijuana to sick people in California, even though he complied with state law concerning medicinal cannabis. My questions to you are simple:

What has my husband done that would justify the federal government forcing my young daughters to grow up without a father?
How can your Administration ignore the will of the California people and prosecute this good, law-abiding man for doing exactly what state law permits?

Mr. President, my husband is not a criminal and shouldn’t be treated like one. Matt is not a drug dealer or trafficker. He’s not driving around in a fancy car and living in some plush mansion–trust me. My husband is a regular guy, and we’re a regular, middle-class family. Yet even though Matt took great pains to follow state and local law, he is currently facing a severe prison sentence. This all seems so surreal. […]

Nothing is worth Matt’s liberty. And I cannot even bear to think of our daughters growing up without their father. This is a nightmare.

Mr. President, I ask you, I beg of you, to convey the position you took on national television last month to your local law enforcement agents. Or, even better, come to Stockton, California and see for yourself. Sit down with Matt and hear our story. My husband is not the “bigger fish to fry.” Please drop this case and put an end to our family’s nightmare.

Update: Mark Kleiman gives his view of the story.