Drug WarRant

An interesting white paper: Rehabilitating the war on drugs: Central America and the legalisation debate by Chris Abbott and Joel Vargas at Open Briefing.

I found these passages to be a particularly good description of the U.S. approach toward the drug war and how it impacts Central America:

The war on drugs is the ultimate manifestation of the dominant security orthodoxy, which believes that military force can ultimately control insecurity. In the same way the war on terror essentially aimed to ‘keep the lid’ on terrorism and insecurity without addressing the root causes of perceived injustices, the war on drugs aims to keep the lid on the rising tide of cartel violence without addressing the root causes of illicit drug consumption in North America. Security policies based on this ‘control paradigm’ are often self-defeating in the long term as they simply create a pressure cooker effect. […]

What do the external powers fear so much? In short, the potential decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs in Central America threatens the foundations of deliberate policies enacted by North America and elsewhere.

Central to any war fought using the control paradigm are the principles of protecting the homeland by keeping the violence ‘over there’ and the near complete attention given to tackling external consequences rather than resolving any internal causes. These principles formed the core of the war on terror strategy and lie at the heart of the war on drugs. Legalising drugs in Central America would mean the fight could no longer be carried out elsewhere and would force the consumer markets of North America to look inwards at the internal drivers of the illicit drugs trade.

The white paper goes on to suggest phased-in decriminalization and/or legalization of drugs, in ways that mostly make sense, although I wasn’t sure if this was tongue in cheek:

If successful, this strategy could be extended to include more harmful drugs, such as cocaine and marijuana (the principal targets of the American war on drugs) and encompass the regulation of production and distribution.

… more harmful drugs? Than what?

Brought to my attention thanks to comments in the last post, is George Mason University’s Faculty Staff resources Fact Sheet on Marijuana.

Pretty much every university has one of these – many times it’s part of the contract that faculty and staff sign, and sometimes it’s also used to communicate with students (in some cases they, too, must sign to indicate that they’ve read it). I’m guessing that having a drug policy, and some kind of statement about the effects of various drugs, is part of a condition for federal funding, etc.

But the content varies widely. Some are quite truthful (and therefore bland). Others outrageously full of falsehoods (like this one). Most are a mix.

Since it’s a required thing, they pick one up from somewhere (often boilerplate recommendations from government sources) and disseminate it without any real vetting.

At the university where I work, I got ours changed. About the only really offensive thing in ours was a reference to marijuana causing lung cancer. I contacted the head of the Human Resources Department with information about the Tashkin study on marijuana and lung cancer, and they cheerfully changed the document to eliminate the lung cancer reference entirely.

In many cases, that’s all that’s needed. Simply contacting Human Resources and pointing out the factual errors. Often, the people in charge of disseminating these things either 1. are not aware of the truth or 2. never read the statement.

If you are a student, faculty, or staff member at a university, check out their drug policy documents. Look for verifiable factual errors (including those where there is strong dispute from other studies), and provide that information to the people in charge. Politely ask them to change the document to match current scientific facts.

These are people who pride themselves as working at institutions of higher learning and are usually receptive to facts (as opposed to government workers).

George Will has a particularly stupid column in the Washington Post: The drug legalization dilemma with recycled talking points from the likes of Mark Kleiman.

There are a whole lot of flaws in his arguments – here’s the main one:

So, suppose cocaine or heroin were legalized and marketed as cigarettes and alcohol are. And suppose the level of addiction were to replicate the 7 percent of adults suffering from alcohol abuse or dependency. That would be a public health disaster. As the late James Q. Wilson said, nicotine shortens life, cocaine debases it.

Still, because the costs of prohibition — interdiction, mass incarceration, etc. — are staggeringly high, some people say, “Let’s just try legalization for a while.” Society is not, however, like a controlled laboratory; in society, experiments that produce disappointing or unexpected results cannot be tidily reversed.

Note first that under the Will/Kleiman world-view, all drugs – from marijuana to heroin – will be accepted and marketed in the same identical way that alcohol is under a legal regime. They can’t even imagine different models happening in society. And so we must suffer for their lack of imagination.

Then, of course, in their world-view each new drug will result in a new abuse-population segment equivalent size to that of alcohol abuse with no overlap. Logically, then, if we legalized 20 new drugs, 147 percent of the population would then be suffering from abuse and dependency.

Of course, that’s absolute rubbish.

The truth is that abuse and dependency are driven by a lot of factors and are not specifically tied to the availability of drugs. There is a certain portion of the population that is more likely to abuse drugs, and they will likely abuse drugs regardless of their availability. Changes in that portion have more to do with social structure and than drug policy. This has been proven in world-wide models.

Legalizing a drug doesn’t mean that you have a new population of abusers. Instead, some who now abuse alcohol will switch to the other drug. Some will combine. Some will abuse the new legalized drug who abused it when it was illegal.

The largest increase in number of users of that drug will come from the casual non-problematic use. Criminalization is much more likely to deter non-problematic use than it is to deter abuse.

And that final point about society being messy, so we can’t just try legalization for awhile because we might not be able to reverse it… how convenient. And fucking offensive.

Imagine that argument being used for other social changes… “Oh, yeah, negroes have it rough, but we can’t really take a chance on freeing the slaves, because what if it turns out to be socially disruptive to me and my white friends? We’d never have the political will to reverse the decision. They should just continue being slaves and accept that as being part of the price of our free society.”

There are other points of stupidity and dishonesty in Will’s OpEd, such as his discussion about tobacco.

Another legal drug, nicotine, kills more people than do alcohol and all illegal drugs — combined. For decades, government has aggressively publicized the health risks of smoking and made it unfashionable, stigmatized, expensive and inconvenient. Yet 20 percent of every rising American generation becomes addicted to nicotine.

Note that he uses tobacco to show health risks, and yet conveniently fails to mention that American society has dramatically reduced alcohol use and abuse without criminalization.

Or:

Furthermore, legalization would mean drugs of reliable quality would be conveniently available from clean stores for customers not risking the stigma of breaking the law in furtive transactions with unsavory people. So there is no reason to think today’s levels of addiction are anywhere near the levels that would be reached under legalization.

Why would clean drugs of safe dosage in controlled setting result in higher levels of addiction? Will doesn’t say. He once again implies that availability=addiction, something that is demonstrably untrue.

Throughout, he conflates alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine (and other drugs), even though all three drugs are dramatically different in terms of their effects

And finally, the specter of public health disaster from an unknown supposedly massive group of people just waiting to become addicts at the drop of a legal drug in George Will’s fantasy world still isn’t justification for the worldwide disaster that is the war on drugs.

When the UN Won’t Condemn Torture You Know Something’s Very Wrong by Damon Barrett. INCB continues to run amok.

Arizona governor signs law to bar medical marijuana at colleges. Seems a shame that those who need it for medical purposes will be the only ones not smoking pot in college.

Media coverage list of the Australia21 report.

All right. Bend over – you might be trying to smuggle in the Constitution

Glenn Greenwald tweet: Justice Kennedy’s opinion on strip-searches is breathtakingly dumb, among other things.

• The Obama DOJ and strip searches by Glenn Greenwald
• Police-State Logic by Bernard E. Harcourt at Baklinization

… while America burns

Joint Press Conference by President Obama, President Calderon of Mexico, and Prime Minister Harper of Canada

President Obama: Our other major focus today was the security that our citizens deserve. Criminal gangs and narco-traffickers pose a threat to each of our nations, and each of our nations has a responsibility to meet that threat. In Mexico, President Calderón has shown great courage in standing up to the traffickers and cartels, and we’ve sped up the delivery of equipment and assistance to support those efforts.

Here in the United States, we’ve increased cooperation on our southern border, and dedicated new resources to reducing the southbound flow of money and guns, and to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States, which helps fuel — helped to fuel this crisis. And today each of us reaffirmed our commitment to meeting this challenge together — because that’s the only way that we’re going to succeed.

Beyond our borders, these cartels and traffickers pose an extraordinary threat to our Central American neighbors. So we’re teaming up. Defense ministers from our three countries met last week as a group — for the first time ever. And we’re going to be coordinating our efforts more closely than ever, especially when it comes to supporting Central America’s new strategy on citizen security, which will be discussed at the Summit of the Americas in Colombia next week.

An excellent new report from Australia 21 Roundtable: The Prohibition of Illicit Drugs is Killing and Criminalising Our Children and We Are All Letting it Happen

This report came out of a roundtable discussion in January on the topic “What are the likely costs and benefits of a change in Australia’s current policy on illicit drugs?”

Lots of good stuff in there. It’s not a blueprint (like Transform has done), but a good call to debate, and a very strong condemnation of business as usual.

In spite of the increasing evidence that current policies are not achieving their objectives, most policymaking bodies at the national and international level have tended to avoid open scrutiny or debate on alternatives. […]

The biggest winners from the current policy are those in league with organised crime and those corrupted by it. […]

“What we want governments to do is feel quite uncomfortable about the predicament they have put us in. They are running a system that is causing a whole lot of harm. Until they begin to start looking for the solutions we are not going to make progress. When they begin looking for the solutions we are in the position to suggest ideas. It is the government that has the problem. Our task is to place it on their agenda.” – Hon Michael Moore […]

International drug prohibition has, until now, been maintained through international treaties and conventions, spear-headed by a US “War on drugs”. The recognition that this war has been comprehensively lost is leading to an international rethink about prohibition and about these treaties and conventions. […]

“For us, when we lost our son, we did not seek sympathy, we saw the injustice and craziness of our drug laws. We wanted people to focus on that, not on our suffering.” – Marion and Brian McConnell are founding members of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform. […]

“Many people who think of themselves as the beneficiaries of prohibition are really net losers. Parents are much more at risk of losing their children under prohibition than they would be if there was some kind of system where we had some measure of control over illicit drugs.” – Non Professor Peter Baume […]

“I think the idea that prohibition kills is an important one. So my plea is how can we get governments to buy into this issue? I think they need to see that what they are doing and not doing, is causing a lot of the harms. At some stage they have to be held accountable for allowing this to happen.” – Hon Professor Geoff Gallop […]

By maintaining prohibition and suppressing or avoiding debate about its costs and benefits, it can be argued justifiably that our governments and other community leaders are standing idly by while our children are killed and criminalised.

With the Obama administration continuing an all-out war against medical marijuana in California, despite overwhelming support for it amongst the voters, it seems clear that the Obama campaign has done the electoral math and figured that there’s no possible way that California goes to Santorum or Romney, so Obama has already banked the 55 electoral votes.

President Obama could recall his drones from Pakistan and start strafing homeless shelters in San Francisco and the California liberals would dutifully line up and vote Democratic (how else do you explain Feinstein?)

Californians should feel, at the very least, a bit betrayed. No, they should be royally pissed off. And yet, the President of the United States is standing there, swaggering, pointing his finger at them and taunting: “Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it? Vote Santorum?”

If Californians can’t find the cojones to make a protest vote with Ron Paul or Gary Johnson, then they should have the decency to stay home on election day, because while President Obama may not care much about a low turnout, the Democratic Party eventually will.

Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense

As Part of Agreement with Prosecutors, Capitol Hemp to Close Stores

Oaksterdam University Raided by Feds

Radley Balko has an excellent article at the Huffington Post: Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops

The whole thing is a must-read and it explores all the issues in the title very well, through the lens of one particular traffic stop.

Radley spends a fair time in the piece talking about the disaster of allowing drug dog alerts to be the basis for a search, and even has a side-bar following the success rate of one particular dog.

As regular readers know, I think that the Supreme Court decision in Caballes v. Illinois was one of the worst decisions the court has made in recent years.

The Supreme Court will shortly have an opportunity to re-visit Caballes. They’ve agreed to hear arguments in the case of Florida v. Harris, where the Florida Supreme Court ruled that it wasn’t enough to say that a drug dog was certified, there had to be some ongoing proof of its abilities.

I’m not sure if the Supremes are accepting the case because they want a crack at fixing Caballes, or because they want to overrule the Florida Supreme Court. At least there will be another discussion and now Justice Stevens (who authored the Caballes decision) is gone.

Basically, the Florida Supremes said that there should be some kind of standard of reliability if drug dogs are going to be the reason for a search.

The government’s position is that as long as the dog receives some kind of certification of training (with no particular standard for that training or certification required), then that’s all that’s needed. And they say there should be no need to track field accuracy. They simply claim that any time a dog gives a false positive in the field it’s because there used to be drugs in that car (impossible to prove one way or the other). And, of course, false negatives are never known.

It’s a convenient position – no accountability whatsoever.

We’ll see if the Supremes are willing to listen to facts and logic, and whether the volumes of new evidence that has surfaced since Caballes makes a difference.

Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast has a good piece about the Florida v. Harris opinion.

Some great weekend reading: IDPC Drug Policy Guide, 2nd Edition (pdf) If you’re having trouble getting it to load, it’s also available here.

The International Drug Policy Consortium is “a global network promoting objective and open debate on drug policy” and they have put out a powerful fact-based (as opposed to ideologically-based) guide to assist countries in crafting drug policy.

These are some very smart people from varying backgrounds internationally. It’s not specifically a call for legalization (although there is an excellent section on “Legal Regulation” in there). But it is about applying facts to the situation, regardless of whether you are confined by drug treaties or have more flexibility. And it’s about reducing harm – both drug harm and drug policy harm, and therefore it’s about changing the metrics of measuring success. (They note how current metrics (number of seizures, number of arrests, number of users) are useless in actually measuring success.)

When these folks talk about a balanced approach, they really mean it — and it makes even more starkly clear how intellectually bankrupt the ONDCP’s blathering about “balanced approach” really is.

So far, I’ve read “Chapter 1 -Core Principles” and “Chapter 2 – Criminal Justice” and have found them quite compelling.

Here’s a rather lengthy excerpt from Chapter 1 that demonstrates a sensibility found throughout the document:
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