Drug WarRant

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:
Continue reading →

Co-operation urged as way to combat drug war

It’s time for greater military co-operation in North America’s long war on drugs, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and his U.S. and Mexican counterparts said Tuesday.

The first trilateral meeting of defence ministers ended with a common front on the need for greater co-operation to assess common threats to the continent — foremost among which is the violent drug trade, they said.

A decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, drug cartels and the threat of natural disasters — and the demand for swift, co-ordinated military responses to both — appear to have elbowed terrorism off the front burner, judging by the assessments provided in a 45-minute news conference after the meeting.

“This is obviously one of the serious threats that is confronting North and Central and South America, is the drug cartels and the drug trafficking that is going on,” said Leon Panetta, the U.S. secretary of defence.

He was joined on the dais by MacKay, Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan, the secretary of national defence for Mexico, and Mexico’s navy secretary Adm. Francisco Saynez Mendoza.

“We are committed to doing everything possible so that ultimately we can not only weaken but end this threat to our people,” said Panetta.

I don’t care how the ONDCP sugar-coats it and claims to have ended the war on drugs, we’ve got the heads of defense for all of North America talking about how one of their biggest military priorities is this war.

The ONDCP and Kevin Sabet can go around talking about HOPE and treatment all they want, but we’re not going to let them ignore the the massive drug war that is killing people.

They would like the American people to believe that there is no war — that it’s just a kind and caring government whose head of drug control policy just goes around visiting treatment centers. But that’s clearly not the truth.

Update: Leon Panetta appears unclear whether it’s 50,000 dead in Mexico or 150,000.

Amid the who-said-what confusion, what’s interesting about this apparent lapse is:

1) It doesn’t seem to make much difference to the Sec. of Defense Panetta whether the number is 50,000 or 150,000. The sloppiness about the difference of 100,000 human beings could contribute to the way in which Mexican lives seem pawns to U.S. security strategy–a perception that is widespread here and of particular concern to many Mexicans, especially on the border;

2) The emphasis on the “bloody drug war” is being used to intensify the threat perception and support the need to regional-ize the response, under U.S. direction.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation has a good follow-up report on the recently concluded UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna.

The CND is basically a tightly controlled international pro-drug-war event. Country representatives dutifully report that they are enthusiastically carrying out world drug laws and nobody suggests that they might not be the best thing for the world.

But, as Transform notes, there were some cracks in that facade this year.

Yet, for the jaded NGO veterans of this event there was also something new and highly significant: the first tentative challenges to the global prohibitionist regime appeared in the CND. Some merely called for a debate, Argentina being a notable example, its delegate stating in the plenary session that:

“Argentina adequately meets all its obligations arising from treaties that structure what we usually call the “institutional / legal system of drug control and the fight against drug trafficking”. Regarding this issue, we should perhaps analyse if, after decades and considering the results achieved so far, time has not arrived to start an open debate on the consistency and effectiveness of some of the provisions contained in those treaties.”

This statement was particularly heretical as it openly questioned the effectiveness and consistency of the treaties.

Even stronger was the statement from the Czech Republic delegation. Here are some excerpts:

…Nevertheless on behalf of the Czech Republic I would like to take the opportunity and draw attention to the recently released Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, signed by important figures in the world politics, which stated that some important aspects of our countries as well as international efforts of drug policies failed.

Therefore we would like to express that the findings of this Report seem to mark what many of us would like to state but from many reasons are hesitant to state.

Czech Prime minister Necas personally supported the Report of the Global Commission on Drug policy considering the report to be an important challenge by the heads of state and politicians who have signed it.

He said: “above all, anti-drug policy should be based on effective and economically efficient preventative and treatment measures, not on criminalisation of people who suffer from drug addiction but often are not causing harm to others. Czech anti-drug policy is basically going in the right direction, but we must not be afraid to promote additional effective solutions and to be inspired by other states as well” […]

The attitude of the Czech Republic is based on pragmatic drug policy, which leads the way towards the decriminalization of those addicted to drugs, support for preventative programmes and the minimisation of risks connected with drug use of course not undermining rehabilitation as the best and ultimate goal.

We are convinced that changes in current legal regulations are necessary in certain segments of the countries and the world drug policies. We are ready to cooperate in this field with everybody who feels dedicated to those important changes. We feel that the globalised world does not allow us anymore to continue with the expensive experiment of the War on Drugs without a serious international debates especially on why there is after all so many people dying of HIV?AIDS and other known reasons in connection with the drugs problem and look even more closely on the evidence and take the brave steps towards better decisions that improve significantly the world drugs situation

Transform concludes from all this:

It may come to be seen as something of a watershed year – and with the rapidly unfolding debate on alternatives to the war on drugs in Latin America it seems safe to say that CND may never be the same again. Next year it may actually be quite interesting.

I look forward to interesting.

Tough drug laws harm health and safety, doctors say

Criminalizing the use of marijuana and other tough on crime approaches haven’t worked, say public health doctors from across Canada who propose taxation and regulation instead.

The chief medical health officers in three provinces wrote a paper reviewing the evidence on Canada’s current illicit drug policies in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Open Medicine. […]

Strang, Dr. Perry Kendall, chief provincial medical health officer for B.C. and Dr. Moira McKinnon, who holds the same job in Saskatchewan, wrote that opponents to drug policy reform commonly argue drug use would increase if health-based models were stressed over drug law enforcement.

But they said a recent study by the World Health Organization concluded that countries with stringent illegal drug policies for users did not have lower levels of use than those with liberal policies.

The authors said governments need to consider other approaches that include public health objectives that minimize health and social harms, such as:

• Taxing marijuana as alcohol and tobacco are.
• Licensing cannabis dispensaries and issuing prescriptions for medical marijuana.
• Implementing age limits and other sales restrictions like those used to reduce alcohol use.
• Regulating and controlling the availability of potent substances to reduce the illegal market.

That’s right. Tough drug laws are not part of a good balanced approach. They are harmful.

That’s right. I’ve declared that the term domestic abuse is no longer operable, because now, on days that I don’t beat her, I buy her flowers, do something nice for her, or apply firm non-violent discipline.

It’s a new balanced approach to marriage. And I should be getting some credit from all of you for being so much better than her previous husband (who didn’t do those extra nice things).

….

Those who know me have figured out by now that this is merely a disturbing analogy (and they’ve probably even figured out to what similar outrage the analogy refers) – I’m not married. This is inspired by a recent twitter exchange with Kevin Sabet.

Drug War Rant: @rafaelONDCP @KevinSabet If ONDCP ended war on drugs, why is Panetta going to Canada to announce increase in drug war? bit.ly/GTqmO6

Kevin Sabet: @DrugWarRant You are using the term drug war (as is the media).Point is the term is outdated, but foreign assistance and cooperation isn’t.

Dan Riffle: @KevinSabet @DrugWarRant @rafaelONDCP is the term outdated, or just unpopular? If policy is the same, why else call it something different?

Drug WarRant: @KevinSabet If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can’t make it not a duck by simply calling it a “balanced approach.”

Drug WarRant: @KevinSabet The truth is that the U.S. is waging a violent war on drugs and drug users that results in thousands of deaths, here and abroad.

Kevin Sabet: @Doctor_Iffle @drugwarrant @rafaelondcp Policy is different. Fair Sentencing Act. HOPE. DMI. Vet Tx Courts. Safe Disposal. PDMPs. ‘Nuff said

The twitter conversation is still continuing, but this gives you an idea.

So, in Kevin’s mind, the policy is different. Sure, he’s still beating his wife supporting an overall policy that results in death and destruction worldwide, but now, there’s all this other good stuff as well. And shouldn’t that be what counts?

Update: At Kevin Sabet’s request, post has been corrected to show that Kevin is not still beating his wife.

Kevin Sabet (via Twitter): Ur latest post using the wife beating analogy is disgusting and I demand you take it down.In your post you say”he’s still beating his wife”.

Apparently all the people who have died in the drug wars worldwide, those who have had their civil liberties taken from them, the families who have been robbed of a parent to incarceration, the people who have lost their livelihood, their possessions, their children because of overzealous drug war prosecution, the people in real trouble who have been ignored because their behavior was considered a criminal justice issue — all these are not disgusting.

Well, they’re disgusting to me. As disgusting as domestic abuse (which I do find extremely disgusting) and that’s why I use the analogy. Because it maybe shocks you into realizing that supporting the drug war is as bad as supporting domestic abuse.

Red Cross Weighs in on Drug Criminalization

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is one of the oldest and most eminent global health organizations in the world. IFRC influences the community-level services of millions of health professionals in its local and national chapters and is a respected leader in emergency health services. It was therefore of note that at the recent annual session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), the IFRC representative spoke not only about the harm reduction work that the organization has long supported but about drug policy more generally.

In particular, the IFRC called on the member states of CND to turn away from criminalization of drug use in their national policies. […]

To conclude, the IFRC, on behalf of the most vulnerable people affected by drug use, strongly calls upon key stakeholders and donors to exert all possible efforts to gather knowledge on the scale of the drug use epidemic at country level and decide on the proper response accordingly. Criminalization, discrimination and stigmatization are not such responses. Laws and prosecutions do not stop people from taking drugs. Neither does the cold turkey methods of detoxification that can be potentially life-threatening. On the contrary, governments should recognize once and for all that a humanitarian drug policy works!

Good to see. And the Red Cross has huge respect globally.

The Brutal Logic of a Drug Warrior: Put ‘Em All in Cages

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf does a wonderful job of dismantling David P. Goldman’s column in the Asia Times.

Goldman’s notions are truly pathetic, involving solving Mexico’s problems by waging war against the poor and locking them all up, and Conor handily smacks him down.

But there’s one area in particular I wanted to highlight, because we hear this argument from prohibitionists so often.

Here’s a rebuttal [to legalization] that the author apparently finds persuasive. “Libertarians used to argue that arresting criminals was futile as long as crime paid, because there always would be someone willing to take the job; the only remedy, they added, was to legalize drugs, bring down the price and eliminate the economic incentive,” he writes. “The trouble is that the Mexican gangs do not restrict their predations to drugs, as the frightful incidence of kidnapping makes clear.” He is apparently blind to the fact that those gangs would be far less powerful, far less formidable to stop from kidnapping people, if they weren’t enriched with obscene amounts of wealth the likes of which they could only plausibly obtain from one source that can in fact be eliminated: drug profits. Prohibition era gangs committed crimes besides producing and selling alcohol. Do you know what made them less powerful? Or why they’ve long since ceased to terrorize law-abiding Americans?

But this is the illogic of a drug warrior. His solution requires locking up vast swaths of a country’s population in cages while the folks that remain free are caught in a hopeless attempt to eliminate a black market. He nevertheless points at the libertarian solution and says, as if its a commensurate complaint, “Even if you legalize drugs there will still be other crime in Mexico.”

Yet his side is still driving policy in the United States.

Unfortunately, true.

It drives me crazy when I hear that argument.

Now I bring in about $100 a month from advertising and donations to this blog, enough to cover hosting costs. And I have a full-time job that pays my rent, food, and everything else. Imagine someone saying “It wouldn’t matter if Pete lost his job. He’s got a blog.”

If you eliminate the black market drug profits for the traffickers, then they don’t have the money to hire as many soldiers, which are used to intimidate people when they commit other crimes. They also don’t have the money to bribe police, judges, and government officials to look the other way when these crimes are committed.

Sure, when drugs are legalized these really bad people will try to operate in other areas, but they’ll have lost the bulk of their funding and be easier to stop. And this time when we catch or kill one, there will no longer be the same incentive for someone else to take their place.

Update: It still amazes me how this argument refuses to die. I think part of it is that some people look at the problem and correctly recognize that if we legalized all drugs today, the bad people in Mexico who are decapitating rivals wouldn’t suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke like some suddenly irrelevant cartoon creature. Of course not – we never said that they would.

They’ll try to do other things that they already do (kidnapping, etc.), but they’ll no longer be drug trafficking organizations. They’ll merely be murderous criminals. And when they are caught or killed, there will be nobody to take their place, because there will no longer be billions of dollars — close to the entire national budget — coming in to their organizations from drug trafficking.

There isn’t enough money in Mexico to replace the money they get from drugs.

Is getting rid of the cartels the ONLY reason to legalize? Of course not. It’s just one of many very good reasons.

More of this, please.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple on Friday said he has shut down the department’s drug unit and reassigned the controversial squad’s investigators within his department.

“The Drug Interdiction Unit is no longer. … We’re going in a different direction,” Apple said. “We’re not going to turn our head to drug activity or gambling or prostitution or any other crimes they were investigating, but there’s a lot of other crimes that need attention.”

Apple’s decision to close the unit follows a series of Times Union stories about the unit’s use of criminal forfeiture funds, including purchasing take-home vehicles for its six investigators.

Drug task forces are a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons. They are especially prone to corruption. They have a tendency to consider themselves above local supervision. They lose touch with their core purpose (serve and protect) and are more likely to consider the citizenry as the enemy (like soldiers in a war zone). The fact that they work exclusively with a crime that is consensual means that they spend their time trying to entrap and turn people, rather than truly investigating crime.

Unfortunately, the feds encourage drug task forces through funding and through assisting them in getting around local/state regulations. And the money for drug task forces means that drug enforcement becomes more of a priority than other crime.

Sheriff Craig Apple appears to have the right idea. Focus on policing.

Apparently Defense Secretary Leon Panetta didn’t get the message that Gil Kerlikowske had ended the war on drugs.

Panetta set to announce more support for drug war

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in the Canadian capital Monday, where he is expected to announce new measures to support the fight against narcotics in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

I’m waiting to hear back from the ONDCP how they managed to miss sending the memo to the largest agency in the government.