Drug WarRant

… 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.

From the wonderful folks at The Onion…

Nation’s Moms Invent New Recreational Drug To Worry About

DENVER—A new illicit drug that is incredibly cheap, highly addictive, and extremely easy to produce is appearing in school yards across the country, the fevered imaginations of the nation’s mothers who need something to fret over confirmed today.

The totally contrived drug that in no way exists in any objective reality and is only real in the minds of mothers is known by its street name, “scramp,” and according to moms who previously did not have enough actual things to worry about, a batch can be made from everyday household supplies such as sugar, window cleaner, and petroleum jelly.

Wait ’til they hear about Dihydrogen Monoxide.

The Drug Czar: “We should examine our … failures forthrightly, and we should adjust our approach as necessary”

The drug czar’s office continues to tout its so-called “third way” of drug policy, rejecting the lock-em-up approach on one side and the extreme legalization approach on the other side.

The truth is that there is no “third way” — the ONDCP is merely trying to avoid taking the blame for the drug war destruction they cause.

The drug czar’s office claims that in the 2013 budget, demand reduction is funded at a higher level than domestic law enforcement. Sure it is. By a very small amount. But that was true way back in 2005 (and has been every year since then).

To be bragging that the feds are spending less on domestic law enforcement than demand reduction is pretty weak, especially since domestic law enforcement is supposed to be the purview of the states (and the states also spend enormous amounts on domestic law enforcement).

If you take a look at total supply reduction efforts (including international interdiction, etc.), it’s very clear that the third way is merely more of the same.

In 2005, the supply reduction portion of the budget was $11,473,400,000 (56.8% of the budget). For the 2013 request, it’s $15,061,000,000 (58.8% of the budget). Note: in 2003, the government simply stopped including many of the DOJ costs of incarcerating federal drug prisoners in their budget numbers, or those supply-side figures would be even higher.

That’s right. The failed supply-side approach to drug policy has increased both in terms of actual dollars and percentage of total budget.

The third way is a sham – a flim-flam game by charlatans who know that the drug war is a failure, but due to self-interest are unwilling to discuss true alternatives honestly. So instead, they hawk their Third Way Tonic to cure all your drug war ills and hope that you’re dumb enough to buy it.

Marijuana driving limits die on Colorado House floor

It was expected to pass.

A bill making it easier to convict people of driving high on marijuana was among the more than two dozen bills sacrificed in the Colorado House Tuesday night during a gridlocked debate over civil unions.

The 5 nanogram limit would have been better than what we have in Illinois (0), but it still would have been based on fear rather than science.

The Drug Czar’s office has been kicking up a storm of fear about drivers high on marijuana without doing the science to determine the level of danger and any real measure of impairment. As far as I can tell, the 5 nanogram limit was a rather arbitrary amount.

What this means is that prosecutors must continue to prove impairment on a case-by-case basis.

And what’s wrong with that?

Action Alert: Stop the Department of Justice from using funds to crack down on medical marijuana

AMENDMENT TO H.R. 5326, AS REPORTED
OFFERED BY MR. ROHRABACHER OF CALIFORNIA
At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert
the following:

1 SEC. ll. None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used, with respect to the States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.

Good news in Illinois. Federal appeals court bans enforcement of Illinois eavesdropping law

Why Obama got touch on medical marijuana: 3 theories — None of these three theories actually nails it, in my opinion.

Arrested, Jailed for a Legitimate Pain Script at The Agitator.

Terrance Huff Files Lawsuit Against Illinois Police Officer Michael Reichert Over ‘Trekkie Traffic Stop’ by Radley Balko at Huffington Post

Alcohol Prohibition Not Helping Native Americans Deal With Harms of Alcohol by Tony Newman

34 National and State Organizations Send Sign on Letter to Administration Regarding Enforcement of Federal Marijuana Laws

Dear President Obama:
We, the 18 national and 16 state organizations below are writing to commend your Administration for its efforts to enforce federal drug laws, and strongly urge you to reject any calls to revise the United States’ policy on illegal drugs that would legalize marijuana or other illicit drugs. We urge your Administration to remain steadfast in its efforts to enforce Federal drug laws in states that allow “medical marijuana” and to reject any calls for outright legalization of marijuana and other drugs anywhere in the United States.

The supporters, of course, include a lot of the major drug war profiteers, such as National Sheriff’s Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Troopers Coalition, National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, along with the major funded (some by government) anti-drug orgs like Drug Free America Foundation, The Partnership at Drugfree.org, CADCA, etc, and weirdo groups like Save Our Society from Drugs, plus, oddly, 5 groups from Arizona.

I hope the President is happy with his core supporters.

Johnson: I Can Win Presidency

“I don’t think either Obama or Romney are offering up solutions to the problems that the country faces,” Johnson said. “I think that the Libertarian Party really embraces the best of what we really care about. … I think the majority of Americans consider themselves fiscally responsible and socially tolerant. That’s the Libertarian Party and what they stand for.”

Getting on the debate stage would also allow Johnson’s campaign to lure million of dollars in campaign contributions that will be needed to keep his campaign competitive, he said.

Johnson says at least one national poll reports his campaign winning support of about 8 percent of voters across the U.S., just over half the number required to appear in most of the national televised presidential debates.

Drug War under fire

Student’s ordeal: How was Daniel Chong lost in DEA detention?. This absolutely appalling incident by the DEA is getting the national attention it should and hopefully the student will get a fat paycheck from the lawsuit. Importantly, the national attention (as demonstrated in this article) is also focusing on the notion that this isn’t just an isolated incident, but rather an inevitable incident given the mass production of drug war that we are experiencing.

“A typical characterization from authorities when things go wrong is that it was unacceptable what happened, but the rare exception,” said Borden. “In my opinion this misses the central point. In the past few decades we have escalated the drug war and the criminal justice system generally, to the point where we are running huge numbers of people through it, the system becoming incapable of reliably carrying out its basic responsibilities as a result.”

Kevin Sabet seems to be making a career out of providing quotes to media in support of the drug war, and is quoted in this article for no apparent reason.

President Obama has been having a rough couple of months of getting publicly attacked for his drug policies (his own fault, of course, but I doubt his campaign committee expected this fly in the ointment). First, the entire western hemisphere leadership revolts over the drug war and, despite VP Biden’s trip to placate with cash handouts, ends up making the Summit of the Americas about drug policy.

Then he discovers that he’s going to have to answer questions about marijuana as he tries to increase his public visibility for campaign purposes.

Now, just as he wants the party to come together behind him, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attacks federal crackdowns on medical marijuana

“Access to medicinal marijuana for individuals who are ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is both a medical and a states’ rights issue. Sixteen states, including our home state of California, and the District of Columbia have adopted medicinal marijuana laws – most by a vote of the people.

“I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California, and undermine a policy that has been in place under which the federal government did not pursue individuals whose actions complied with state laws providing for medicinal marijuana.

Good for Congresswoman Pelosi!

We don’t need no stinkin’ science! …

It always amuses me when Keith Humphreys or one of the other prohibition apologists makes some crack about legalizers not being interested in dealing with the facts or the science, when the truth is so clearly the opposite.

The absolutely largest repository of lies and distortions regarding drug policy and the related science is located in the federal government, centered in the ONDCP.

The Drug Czar’s False Statement About Marijuana and Hemp Should Be a Bigger Scandal – nice job by Scott Morgan explaining just how asininely ridiculous was the drug czar’s response to the petition about hemp.

Eric Steenstra follows up:

The Obama Administration Is Wrong to Deny American Farmers a Profitable Crop

I have met with senior ONDCP officials, and they have made clear they understand that industrial hemp is a non-drug crop, not marijuana. The administration should know that one cannot use hemp for drug purposes any more than one can use a poppy seed bagel even though it contains trace opiates. The response proves beyond any doubt that ideological interests and predetermined prohibition of hemp trump science and reason in the Obama White House.

And the Blanks Slate brings us:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug Czar Speeches

The story in the mainstream media may be that it’s down to Romney and Obama for President, but there are other things still going on that can’t be ignored.

Ron Paul Roundup: The World Gazes on His Delegate Strategy in Wild Wonder – fascinating piece by Brian Doherty on the delegate hunt and how the Ron Paul movement has taken advantage of the features of Republic to put Paul in position to make quite a splash in the Convention.

It’s Johnson vs Wrights in the LP debate – Gary Johnson and Lee Wrights debate tonight for the Libertarian Party nomination.

Why Legalizing Drugs is a Bad Idea – John Walters’ ignorant and anti-American rant is at Opposing Views and there’s a comments section…

Puppycide in Fulton, MO — just another in a long line of dead dogs resulting from a small marijuana bust.

Interesting video on how prime-time TV dramas depict the war on drugs. Apparently, they’re doing a fair job of representing the public’s ambivalence.

One of the major failures of public policy has been the inability to consider or craft drug policy that actually narrowly targets real problems.

Those who research policy have often pointed out a couple of verifiable facts of drug use and abuse: the vast majority of drugs are consumed by a tiny minority of individuals, and only a tiny minority of individuals are problematic drug users.

Mark Kleiman has noted that only a small minority of drug users (about 3 million) account for about 80 percent of hard drug use. This basic notion is true regardless of the drug (yes, including alcohol).

Numbers are pretty slippery things in drug policy. I’ve heard figures used regarding 1.3% of the population being addicted to drugs throughout various times in history, and I’ve heard number that are higher. Additionally, each individual drug has its own rate of dependency. Public policy also has an impact on problematic use of drugs (in some cases, prohibition increases the likelihood that abuse will occur due to lack of safety and purity standards).

Finally, it’s often difficult to define “problematic” use; national debates rage over the definition of “addiction,” for example.

Whatever the actual percentage, it’s clear that it’s a small minority overall, so for this article, I’ve arbitrarily chosen “seven-percent” for my own literary enjoyment. Use whatever number is comfortable for you.

Let’s take a moment to look at the players. First, we’ll eliminate the sado-moralists (the rabid true-believers like John Walters who care less about the actual cost to society than the enjoyment of punishing those who do things they don’t like) and the profiteers (those who care less about actual cost to society than the money or power they can get from prohibition).

The stated goal of most who advocate some kind of continuance of prohibition (either in its current state, or some “kindler, gentler” or “swifter, surer” version) is to help drug abusers and society from the ravages of drug abuse. Sounds good.

So, assuming that society has the right to impose some kind of coercive judgement or assistance onto those who abuse drugs — for their good and for the good of society (a point that is certainly not in universal agreement) — how should this occur? That is the central question of public drug policy.

One of the huge problems, of course, is that coercive drug policy has tried to deal with the perceived problem of the 7% by imposing itself on the 100%.

This is at best inefficient. It is at its core wrong. And it is usually counter-productive.

• Inefficient: Our police and courts spend way too much time dealing with the 93%, and our drug testing regimes make no distinction between the weekend pot smoker and the alcohol abuser (and, in fact, may even reward the latter).
• Wrong: Anytime you target and demonize an entire class of people for the misdeeds or problems of a subset of that group, you are crossing a serious moral line. It’s discrimination, and also a matter of fairness.
• Counter-productive: The 100% approach to coercive drug policy results in bizarre governmental actions like setting national goals of reducing the numbers of people using drugs. By definition, this can be accomplished most readily by targeting the 93% rather than the 7%.

Any policy that indiscriminately targets a majority of innocent people (from the standpoint of the core purpose of the policy) in order to reach a small minority is bad policy. Period.

Is it hard to craft a policy that only targets the problems? Well, boo-hoo, don’t complain to us about your inadequacies as a policy maker. Start looking for solutions. And to begin with, that probably means looking at targeted regulations within some kind of legalized system.

Recently, Mark A.R. Kleiman and his cohorts talked in the Wall Street Journal about the third choice they promoted, advocating an option other than “the ‘drug war’ and proposals for wholesale drug legalization.” And yet the solutions they discussed had nothing to do with the 93%.

Drug czar Kerlikowske, loving Kleiman’s way out of a “third choice,” jumped all over that and has been heavily pushing this notion of some kind of mythical policy-land where he can disavow the problems of prohibition that he continues to cause and ignore the legitimate facts related to legalization (as he must by law), through semantic games and talk about treatment instead of incarceration.

And again, nothing they do addresses the 93%.

I tweeted a question to Gil and his communications director Raphael LeMaitre:

If you’re moving toward treatment instead of incarceration, what will you do about drug users who need neither?

No response.

Transform Drug Policy also asked the ONDCP (without response, so far) about this important paper by Alex Stevens: The ethics and effectiveness of coerced treatment of people who use drugs

This takes it a step further and questions the validity of the “third way” at all, particularly when that involves coercion.

Stevens uses three categories of individuals to explore the ethics and effectiveness of coercion:

• Non-problemmatic drug users (self-explanatory)
• Dependent drug users (meet diagnostic criteria)
• Drug dependent offenders (drug dependent users who have committed other crimes)

The whole thing is worth reading. The conclusion:

This article has argued that it is very unlikely that compulsory treatment can be considered ethical for any category of person who uses drugs, outside of the ‘exceptional, crisis’ situations allowed for under the UN Office on Drugs and Crime/World Health Organization review.

It has been argued that quasi-compulsory treatment may be considered ethical (under some specific conditions) for drug dependent offenders who have committed criminal offences for whom the usual penal sanction would be more restrictive of liberty than the forms of treatment that they are offered as a constrained, quasi-compulsory choice. It has briefly reviewed research that suggests that QCT may be as effective as treatment that is entered into voluntarily. This may help individuals to reduce their drug use and offending and to improve their health, but it is unlikely to have large effects on population levels of drug use and crime.

So, there may be limited classes out there who could benefit from a program like HOPE, for example, such as Steven’s third category of drug dependent offenders, where their drug dependency is a factor in lawbreaking (other than drug laws).

But such a solution doesn’t address the real problems of prohibition, which negatively affects huge portions of the population.

And, just to be clear, it is a complete cop-out to put the blame on the user. If you were crafting a public policy that imposed sexual abstinence in order to avoid the societal damage of STD’s and unwanted pregnancies, you would be rightly ridiculed and the law ignored as a bad law. The same is true in drug policy.

It is also a cop-out to say that non-problematic users aren’t generally being sent to prison. That wouldn’t be a sufficient answer for any other discriminated group, so why should it be for this one?

If you’re so damn sure that government intervention is necessary to save society from the scourge of drug abusers, then find a policy that addresses it — don’t go after everyone.

You come up with and promote something that is fair and we’ll stop accusing you of intellectual dishonesty. Until then, most drug policy makers and advisors in the U.S. come off like a bunch of hacks with agendas to push who have nothing really to offer dealing with the big picture. The drug policy reform community (the real ones) have already come up with a policy that is fair and addresses the problem of drug abuse — it’s called “regulated legalization with treatment on demand.”

Try it on for size.

…

And remember, this issue of fairness is only one of the destructive aspects of prohibition.