Drug WarRant

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske responds to the latest petitions regarding legalizing marijuana.

Thank you for participating in We the People and speaking out on the legalization of marijuana. Coming out of the recent election, it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana.

We’ve been in a serious national conversation for some time, and your boss was laughing at us. Now, he’s not laughing so much.

Tom Angell, of Marijuana Majority writes:

“I guess it makes a difference when marijuana legalization gets more votes than your boss does in an important swing state, as happened in Colorado this last election. From ‘legalization is not in my vocabulary and it’s not in the president’s,’ as Gil Kerlikowske often used to say, to ‘it is clear that we’re in the midst of a serious national conversation about marijuana’ is a pretty stark shift. Of course, what really matters is to what extent the administration actually shifts enforcement priorities and budgets, but I sure do like hearing the US drug czar acknowledge the fact that marijuana legalization is a mainstream discussion that is happening whether he likes it or not.”

It’s clear that we have forced a shift in the tenor of the national conversation, and that’s pretty sweet.

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Note: Some have previously pointed out this page at Huffington Post, that shows Obama getting more votes than marijuana in Colorado in the final count, but the official results from the Colorado Secretary of State show that marijuana came out on top.

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Side note:

Some reactions to the various legalization articles out over at The Reality Based Community. Mark Kleiman uses his usual “pox on both your houses” approach, convinced that his opinion is the one and only factual approach. He’s right, of course, to ridicule Patrick Kennedy’s ideas, but for the wrong reason. It’s not that Kennedy’s approach is lacking in facts, but rather that it’s wrong. Simply stating more facts (or more uncertainties) doesn’t necessarily make your argument correct.

Keith Humphreys, on the other hand, gives a glowing review of the Kennedy nonsense. Keith is dumb enough to agree with Kennedy, but smart enough to realize that he’d be skewered in comments, so naturally, for that post, comments are closed (Update: comments now open).

By the way, the Project SAM website is now live: LearnAboutSAM.com

This is basic economics that we’ve been aware of, well, forever, but it’s rarely discussed in mainstream media regarding the drug war.

The economic case for decriminalizing heroin

Here’s the kicker: if drugs sold for that price after taxes in an environment where drugs are legalized, they’d still be cheaper than drugs sold on the black market. So the legal market would drive illegal producers out of business, there wouldn’t be any of the enforcement costs — including huge social costs like mass incarceration — that come with drug prohibition, the government would gain considerable new tax revenue, and because the price is the same, consumption of drugs wouldn’t be any different than under prohibition. In short, the best form of prohibition is still worse than legalize-and-tax.

The wording needs some minor tweaks, but the principle is absolutely on track.

Nice to see something like this in the Washington Post.

David Frum’s latest — Marijuana use is too risky a choice — is probably his most bizarre yet.

I loved the fact that when I got to the article this morning, all I had to do was glance down at the comments and see all sorts of familiar commenters who hang out here properly taking it apart.

This disjointed mess is a perfect example of the intellectual void that exists within this so-called third way.

The new group rejects the “war on drugs” model. It agrees that we don’t want to lock people up for casual marijuana use — or even stigmatize them with an arrest record.

If they really support that, yet oppose legalization, the only thing that makes sense is that they favor alcohol-style prohibition, where it’s legal to consume, but not to sell. After all, that worked so well.

And yet, the reason given for keeping it illegal is to make it a use deterrent.

Yet as a parent of three, two exiting adolescence and one entering, I’ve found that the argument that makes the biggest impression is: “Marijuana is illegal. Stay away.” I think many other parents have found the same thing.

So there’s no coherent thought whatsoever.

And the fact that Frum wants the government to help him raise his kids is just pathetic. When they were younger, did he tell them that stoves were illegal to keep them from burning themselves?

He follows that paragraph with:

When we write social rules, we always need to consider: Who are we writing rules for? Some people can cope with complexity. Others need clarity. Some people will snap back from an early mistake. Others will never recover.

“Just say no” is an easy rule to follow. “It depends on individual risk factors, many of them unknowable in advance” — that rule is not so easy.

Wow. “When we write social rules,… who are we writing rules for?” That sends a chill down my spine.

And then this stupid notion that today’s prohibition is a simple rule, compared to regulated legalization, is pure idiocy. “Just say no”? Yeah, how did that work, David?

So far, I haven’t seen a shred of intelligent thought in the leadership of Project SAM. I certainly don’t want them writing social rules for me.

In our system of government, there are designated checks and balances designed to protect the individual from abuse, so that when one area fails, citizens can look to another branch. When it comes to the drug war, however, all bets are off.

Both the executive and legislative branches have been, for the most part, so corrupted by the drug war (or neutered by it) that they’re intractable despite scientific and public policy evidence. And they have maintained their position in the electorate in part through spewing decades of drug war propaganda (although that is now finally wearing thin).

The Supreme Court has long had a significant drug war exception to the Bill of Rights and has never really challenged the government to prove its blatantly false assertions that limiting rights will actually succeed in reducing drug problems.

That leaves the jury system. Nullification is a legitimate way to deal with bad laws, but even there, the Justice system has gone out of its way to try to convince juries that they don’t have that basic innate power.

Even still, the jury system could come into play. Lots of folks have noted there are so many drug cases, that if all drug defendants demanded a jury trial as entitled under the Constitution, the entire court system would collapse. And it’s true.

But here’s where the almost unlimited power of the prosecutor comes into play.

The legislatures have given prosecutors a virtual smorgasbord of charging options, almost all with steep minimum penalties — possession, sale, intent, conspiracy, school zones, gun laws, money laundering, etc. Without even batting an eye, they can pile up enough charges to put you in prison for eternity. (Some years back, one enterprising prosecutor even tried to use a terrorism law against weapons of mass destruction on a meth lab case.)

So going to court is no longer about determining guilt or non-guilt, but rather about negotiating with the prosecutor.

Jacob Sullum has a good piece about Chris Williams, the Montana medical marijuana grower: Plead Guilty or Go to Prison for Life

Yet five years is a cakewalk compared to the sentence Williams originally faced, which would have kept the 38-year-old father behind bars for the rest of his life. The difference is due to an extremely unusual post-conviction agreement that highlights the enormous power prosecutors wield as a result of mandatory minimum sentences so grotesquely unjust that in this case even they had to admit it.

Of more than two dozen Montana medical marijuana providers who were arrested following federal raids in March 2011, Williams is the only one who insisted on his right to a trial. For that he paid a steep price.

Significant reform of the Justice system is required if we’re going to salvage any meaning from our Constitution. But that won’t happen until we end this damned drug war.

I’ve done a bit of an update on the theme for the site. Please let me know if you see any problems.

I also have temporarily reactivated the edit comments function. Apparently, they fixed the bug in an update but the update didn’t actually show up in the numbered update (or something). So I deleted the plug-in and re-installed the newest one in the hopes that it would be the correct version.

Again, let me know if the editing function or comments in general show any problems. If we still have the problem, I’ll have to shut it off again, but at least we know they’re aware of the problem.

Update: Same problem, apparently. Annoying. I’ll deactivate and wait for the next update. If anyone has any connections with the folks at iThemes.com and can light a fire under them to get Ajax Edit Comments fixed, I’d appreciate it. Alternately, if someone knows another reliable comment editing plug-in for WordPress, let me know.

Further Update: New version of the plugin has been released. Let’s try it again.
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Folks, I will not have the level of incivility that has shown up in a few comments in the past couple of days. Infighting with name-calling gets us nowhere. Disagreements with reasoned responses are welcomed and strongly encouraged.

If someone comes on the site and breaks that rule, I expect you to not reply in kind. This is a great group that I admire. Please keep it an enjoyable experience for all.

Thanks.

Wow. Talk about a dysfunctional new arrival to the scene.

Patrick Kennedy on Marijuana: Former Rep. Leads Campaign Against Legal Pot

Jan 5 (Reuters) – Retired Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is taking aim at what he sees as knee-jerk support for marijuana legalization among his fellow liberals, in a project that carries special meaning for the self-confessed former Oxycontin addict.

Kennedy, 45, a Democrat and younger son of the late “Lion of the Senate” Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, is leading a group called Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) that opposes legalization and seeks to rise above America’s culture war over pot with its images of long-haired hippies battling law-and-order conservatives.

Long-haired hippies? You mean like the LEAP folk? Or Walter Cronkite?

“Yes, the drug war has been a failure, but let’s look at the science and let’s look at what works. And let’s not just throw out the baby with the bathwater,” Kennedy, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011, said in a telephone interview.

Right.

Best response to this came from Matt Welch, who tweeted:

“Yes, the drug war has been a failure, but let’s look at the science and let’s look at what works.” Yes let’s, asshole….

That ANY prohibitionist would cloak himself in the mantle of “science,” at a time when pot is still classified Schedule I, is revolting.

David Frum is apparently going to be part of this SAM group, and Kevin Sabet can hardly contain himself with his “third-way” glee.

Apparently, the idea is to keep marijuana illegal, but make prohibition some kind of “nice” thing that takes a public health approach. But that, of course, is nonsense.

Alison Holcomb caught that immediately.

“I don’t know what a public health approach without legalization looks like, if you’re still arresting people,” she said.

The best way, of course, to take a public health approach to marijuana (and other drugs) is to first legalize and regulate, and get the non-problematic users out of the equation. Then focus on policies that help those who can benefit from a public health approach.

Study: 1 in 9 Arizona students got pot from medical marijuana cardholders

This is really great news. Marijuana use by school students in Arizona remained steady, and yet over 11% of the students who used pot now say they got their pot from medical marijuana users. And although that’s illegal, it sure is better than having contact with street dealers and more criminal enterprises.

Of course, the prohibitionists don’t even realize that it’s good news. They’re so stuck in their world-view that when Rafael Lemaitre, communications director for the ONDCP tweeted:

Study: 1 in 9 Ariz. students got pot from medical marijuana cardholders http://t.co/Oawun5a7 via @AsburyParkPress

… you can tell that he’s thinking this is a strike against medical marijuana.

The truth is it’s entirely irrelevant to the discussion about medical marijuana and very relevant to the discussion about making life safer for young people.

He has yet to reply to my response:

.@RafaelONDCP Unless you know that those students wouldn’t have otherwise gotten it, this seems preferable to getting it from criminals.

People, including some teens, are going to purchase pot. That will happen regardless of the laws. However, if they can, they prefer to purchase it through the most safe and legal channels available. If we care about people, then our focus should be on providing those safe and legal channels rather than empowering crime and violence.

Mexico’s President Alters Tactics Against Drug Crimes

Mexico’s new attorney general says there are now 60 to 80 drug cartels operating in the country, a sharp rise from the 10 that existed when outgoing President Calderon took office in 2006. President Enrique Pena Nieto says he wants to go after crime associated with drug trafficking instead of taking down crime bosses.

You mean… we spent all that effort and all those lives taking down the cartels and now, instead of 10 of them, there are 60-80 of them? What a surprise!!!

Not.

We could have told people that would happen. In fact, we did, to anyone who would listen.

Of course, there are those who simply don’t want to listen because they don’t care — the drug war is their game regardless of the outcome.

But what bothers me is those who only seem to be able to think in simplistic terms of the evil drug lords as a finite closed group that can be dismantled, instead of understanding the dynamics of either fueling or starving an environment that recruits, develops, and encourages violent criminal activity.

(By the way, it isn’t just in the drug war that this basic fault predominates — it’s also the foundation for much of the war on terror.)

Sales of armored cars soars 10% in Mexico as drug wars escalate

Sales of armored cars in Mexico were up 10 percent in 2012 from the previous year, according to the Mexican Automotive Armour Association.

Of a total of 3102 purchases of armored vehicles, 70 percent were made by the private sector and the rest by government, said MAAA president, Fernando Echeverri, according to Fox New Latino.

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The most popular armored vehicles, according to Mexico’s MAAA, were Suburban, Grand Cherokee and Tahoe SUVs.

The people who get upset with the Stanford band probably couldn’t get in to Stanford.

Stanford band ruins 2013 Rose Bowl (for boring people)