Drug WarRant

Judge approves class action lawsuit over NYPD’s stop-and-frisk searches

A judge’s ruling Wednesday on a request to authorize a class action lawsuit over the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) use of “stop-and-frisk” searches could see more than 1 million people line up to file claims against the department for violating their constitutional rights.

While it’s not likely to attract that many plaintiffs, people who were illegally searched in New York City any time after January 5, 2005 are eligible to join the lawsuit. […]

“The Court has rightly recognized that illegal stops-and-frisks are not limited to a few rogue police officers but are the product of a program designed at the highest level of the police department and affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers,” Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Darius Charney explained in a prepared statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, all those for whom this practice is a daily reality will now have an opportunity to challenge it as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights and to ask the Court to order real changes in NYPD stop-and-frisk policy.”

Of course, assuming that the lawsuit is successful, it’s the taxpayers who pay and the lawyers to get paid, but still, it has a chance to force change in a department (and Mayor) who clearly are uninterested in considering the existence of Fourth Amendment rights for brown (or poor) people.

Several interesting articles about the upcoming revisions to psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, for the new DSM 5.

How Psychiatrists Make Drugs More Addictive by Jacob Sullum

The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, scheduled to be published a year from now, is expected to include a looser definition of addiction that will qualify millions more drinkers, illegal drug users, and participants in other pleasurable activities for psychiatric diagnoses. The upshot will be a lot more spending by taxpayers and private insurers on rarely effective “treatment” for these putative diseases, along with expanded excuses for depriving people of their freedom and relieving them of their responsibility.

DSM 5 Could Mean 40% of College Students Are Alcoholics by Maia Szalavitz

If the change is finalized, anyone whose drinking or drug use creates any problems will essentially be an addict or alcoholic with a “mild” case of the disease and presumably, therefore, not someone who can learn control over his habits.

While researchers have been encouraging the widespread adoption of “brief interventions” and other techniques that don’t require abstinence or a label— with great success— this change could swing the field in the opposite direction.

And that poses a huge problem, particularly for adolescents and young adults with mild problems who may be pushed to adopt an addict identity and to see themselves as having no way to control their drinking or drug use if they ever “relapse.” Rather than empowering those who do have control to use it, these programs essentially tell kids that if they ever have just one drink or puff on a joint, they’re lost.

The New York Times article points out the self-interest that may be involved…

Addiction Diagnoses May Rise Under Guideline Changes by ian Urbina

“The ties between the D.S.M. panel members and the pharmaceutical industry are so extensive that there is the real risk of corrupting the public health mission of the manual,” said Dr. Lisa Cosgrove, a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, who published a study in March that said two-thirds of the manual’s advisory task force members reported ties to the pharmaceutical industry or other financial conflicts of interest. […]

Dr. O’Brien, who led the addiction working group, has been a consultant for several pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis, all of which make drugs marketed to combat addiction.

He has also worked extensively as a paid consultant for Alkermes, a pharmaceutical company, studying a drug, Vivitrol, that combats alcohol and heroin addiction by preventing craving. He was the driving force behind adding “craving” to the new manual’s list of recognized symptoms of addiction. […]

Seems like such a win-win change to the DSM. The Drug Czar wins because with all these new people “needing treatment” it justifies his emphasis on treatment. The drug companies win because they get to drug people up on drugs for which they get paid. The treatment industry wins because they get a ton of new people “needing treatment” that aren’t difficult cases, and with health care covering much of it, they can just rake in the dough without really having to do anything.

As far as I can tell, the only ones who lose are, well, the people.

One of the things we need to do in this country is fight the long-established notion in the general public (and most especially in the lawmakers) that an effective way to deal with something we don’t like is to use the government to ban it.

The fact is that banning as an effective solution for anything is far from a universal truth, yet many people are convinced that it is, so they don’t even bother sit down and say: “We don’t like this. What are the ways of dealing with this, and which are actually likely to be effective?” Instead, they say: “We don’t like this. Ban it.”

Lawmakers, of course, do this all the time (sometimes even just for the political “glory” of banning something). They’ll even try to ban wearing your pants a certain way.

We find this, of course, in our efforts to reform drug policy. There are a lot of people out there who want us to convince them that drugs are harmless before they are willing to accept not banning them — which is why we so often get bogged down in irrelevant discussions over some minor aspect of marijuana’s effects.

The truth, of course, is that even if the drug is harmful, banning is the wrong way to deal with it.

As some LEAP speakers I’ve heard have said to people: “If the drug is as harmful as you think it is, then why would you possibly want it to be unregulated and distributed by criminals?”

A study in the American Journal of Public Health noted that a national survey found 43% of Americans thought cigarettes should be banned.

That’s pretty stunning. 43%

Here, with cigarettes, we have the most extraordinary success story in changing people’s views and habits regarding a particular drug without it being illegal.

It really is astonishing what has happened in the past 20 years. Smoking rates have gone down dramatically. Lung cancer rates have gone down. I take a look around the university where I work, and where I used to see large crowds of students smoking outside our common area any time of day, now it’s one or two.

And this all happened through education and social acceptance. Sure, there were some over-reaches in the “banning” style now and then (we had some misguided efforts by the university to eliminate outdoor ashtrays that just ended up in more cigarette butts on the ground), but for the most part, change happened without banning.

With this legal drug, life-saving changes were happening in society. At the same time, with the illegal drug heroin, we were seeing death tolls mount from tainted drugs.

There are limited times when a ban can be effective. For example, the FDA may ban an additive used in the processing of food products because it is toxic. This is likely to cause the processing companies to find a different way to prepare the food, and unlikely to cause the consumers to seek out the additive on the black market merely because their lunchmeat has been prepared with a different preservative.

But the use of bans has to be approached on a case by case basis, not merely because we dislike something. As we’ve seen so graphically in the drug war, it isn’t just a matter of whether bans are effective or not. Bans can follow the entire scale from effective to destructive.

As Evert (who sent me the link on cigarette bans) says:

In other words, 43% of the population thinks cigarettes should no longer be taxed nor sold with health warnings. 43% of the population would prefer that cigarettes were sold by people who don’t check ID, who don’t turn child customers away and who reinvest drug money in other criminal enterprises. 43% of the population want to clog the courts and jails with non-violent smokers and people involved in voluntary drug deals. 43% of the population would prefer that cigarettes became a more lucrative source of income for corrupt cops, bureaucrats and organised crime.

If 43% of population thinks this, 43% of the population is certifiably insane.

Mom always reads Drug WarRant on Sundays. This post is for you, Mom!

Hope you have a great day.

Matt Taibbi has a great piece about the lack of drama in the Obama-Romney race for the Presidency.

But this campaign, relatively speaking, will not be fierce or hotly contested. Instead it’ll be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a hand job in a Bangkok bathhouse. And everybody knows it. It’s just impossible to take Mitt Romney seriously as a presidential candidate. Even the news reporters who are paid to drum up dramatic undertones are having a hard time selling Romney as half of a titanic title bout. […]

In other words, Obama versus McCain actually felt like a clash of ideological opposites. But Obama and Romney feels like a contest between two calculating centrists, fighting for the right to serve as figurehead atop a bloated state apparatus that will operate according to the same demented imperial logic irrespective of who wins the White House. […]

Then there’s one more thing – Obama versus Romney is the worst reality show on TV since the Tila Tequila days. The characters are terrible, there’s no suspense, and the biggest thing is, it lacks both spontaneity and a gross-out factor. […]

When the presidential race is a bad show, people might not have any choice but to pay attention to those other things. And this year’s version is the worst show in memory. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Sounds right to me, and it’s an opportunity for us. The lack of excitement in the big show means that anything that Ron Paul is able to do in the Republican Convention is huge news, helping to point out a very real contrast between him and Obama/Romney in areas like drug policy.

It also opens up the possibility of greater visibility for the Johnson-Gray ticket as the media looks for something to talk about.

Latest tweet from NIDA News, which presents itself as a leader in science-based efforts in drug policy.

National @RecoveryMonth is coming up in September – learn more from @SAMHSAgov about substance use treatment: 1.usa.gov/2EptfH

Substance use treatment?

So the vote in the House was 163 in favor and 262 opposed for the Rohrabacher and Hinchey amendment that would have prevented the DOJ from expending any funds for the purpose of interfering with state medical marijuana operations.

A similar bill in 2006 lost 163 to 259.

In 2005, it was 162 to 264.

In 2003, it was 152 to 273.

… or are the police merely less well-trained?

One of the many atrocities covered by Radley Balko is “Puppycides” – the killing of dogs by police (usually dogs who were friendly family pets). In pretty much every case, the officer’s actions are considered “justified” because he or she was “threatened.” (See the bottom of Balko’s latest puppycide post for a guide to threatening dog behavior.)

If these dogs in people’s yards are so dangerous, what about meter readers, mail carriers, and other professionals who have to regularly approach houses as part of their job? We don’t even issue them weapons! Why aren’t we daily hearing about gas company employees being mauled to death by family pets?

Do they have some secret? Are they made of tougher stuff?

I spent a couple of years working for a company that delivered coupons and shoppers door-to-door. In order to be efficient, you couldn’t go back out to the sidewalk each time – you cut across the lawn to the next house. Oftentimes I’d reach the corner of the house and suddenly find myself face-to-face with a guard dog that had another 20 feet of chain. I never shot a single dog, nor did a single dog bite me.

I figured out how to negotiate with threatening dogs (without killing them) all on my own.

Maybe the police should receive some training that doesn’t involve pulling out a gun if Daisy barks.