Drug WarRant

Federal Money Linked to NYPD’s Muslim Surveillance Program

The Associated Press reports that the New York Police Department’s controversial program to monitor Muslim neighborhoods and organizations was funded, at least in part, by White House grants meant to pay for the drug war. The money was given to the NYPD through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which was established years ago to fight gangs and drug trafficking. After September 11, 2001, however, local authorities were permitted to redirect some of that money to fight terrorism. The HIDTA has given out around $2.3 billion over the last 10 years, with about $135 million given to officials in the New York/New Jersey metro area.

Both the drug war and the war on terror are largely about authoritarianism — giving the government more power over the people as opposed to giving people more power over the government — and thus their funding is jealously protected by those in power.

Perhaps this incident will help give the HIDTA another black eye. HIDTA is responsible for many of the most outrageous drug war stunts we’ve seen (particularly through drug task forces).

One of the basic foundations of the drug war is that, since it outlaws a fully consensual act, it is difficult to enforce as there are no aggrieved parties to cooperate with the police. Add to that the high demand and the incredibly easy means of supply and you get frustrated prohibitionists.

This leads to a plethora of back-door and sideways attacks by legislators and law enforcement, as they add volumes of laws outlawing things even peripherally related to drugs.

In Ohio, they’re looking to make it illegal to have a hidden compartment in your car.

A proposed state law, advocated by Gov. John Kasich, would make it a fourth-degree felony to own a vehicle equipped with secret compartments. A conviction would mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine.

Note that with this law it doesn’t matter whether you’re using the secret compartment for anything illegal. It’s the existence of the compartment itself that is banned.

After all, you could have a very legitimate reason to have a secret compartment. If you’re traveling with valuables and you’re concerned about thugs with guns pulling you over and taking your cash for no reason… (Oh, yeah…)

… yes, the asset forfeiture aspect of the drug war has been a huge peripheral part of it, with cash, cars, and buildings being seized merely for the suspicion of being connected to drug trafficking, even if you are not charged.

Drug warriors had a hard time sometimes catching people in the act of selling, so the lawmakers decided to make possession of a certain quantity of drugs proof of selling whether you actually did sell or not. So trafficking can merely mean that you didn’t want to go to a criminal to buy your drugs so often and got a larger quantity for yourself.

And I find almost amusing that if you merely allow a plant to grow by itself in your back yard you can be charged with “manufacturing” (taking a lot of credit away from Mother Nature/God).

Drug-free school zones have nothing to do with selling to kids and merely add on penalties for selling drugs in the city.

Money laundering and conspiracy laws are used to convict people when they don’t have the evidence to convict people.

Drug paraphernalia laws are absurd, since almost anything can have multiple uses, and we have endless dances around what stores can sell, related to other merchandise that they have.

A Chicago politician tried to outlaw small plastic bags. In some states, it’s illegal to sell “rose tubes” (which can also be used as crack pipes). In Georgia, they arrested 32 Indians named Patel, among others, for failing to understand the drug slang that undercover officers were using when the cops bought common household items from them in convenience stores.

Of course, these days all of use have to be careful not to have too many colds. Now you can’t even buy the useful cold medicine with Sudafed at night when you need it, and you risk jail if you buy too much in one month.

And, of course, this hasn’t stopped anything. Meth is still widely available.

The absurdity is pointed out in this delightful tongue-in-cheek article in the Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry: A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From
N-Methylamphetamine by O. Hai, and I. B. Hakkenshit

A novel and straightforward synthesis of pseudoephidrine from
readily available N-methylamphetamine is presented. This practical synthesis is expected to be a disruptive technology replacing the need to find an open pharmacy.

Maybe I’ll try that next time I get a cold.

So, what other bizarre laws related to the drug war do you know?

I remember when this bust happened, and the mention of the books, etc., but I don’t think I commented on it then. This article in DCist reminded me, and some of the wording really hit me.

Capitol Hemp Stops Selling Books Over Fears of Another Raid

If you walked into Capitol Hemp’s Adams Morgan location today, you could buy yourself a “Make Hemp Not War” t-shirt. Or a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. Or hemp oatmeal, loose-leaf tobacco and even the very water pipes that got the store raided by police last October. But you won’t be able to find a copy of Andrew Sullivan’s “The Cannabis Closet,” a book that focuses on mainstream marijuana use.

Sullivan’s book, along with many others, were quietly removed from shelves in recent weeks over concerns that they could be used to justify another police raid on the store. According to a source close to the store, lawyers for co-owners Adam Eidinger and Alan Amsterdam advised them to stop selling the books for fear that they could be used as pretext for another raid while the two negotiate with prosecutors over charges stemming from October’s raids.

That’s pretty surreal in itself, but it gets worse…

One DVD that police singled out was “10 Rules for Dealing With Police,” part of the Flex Your Rights series. According to the affidavit, police questioned the value of such a DVD unless someone wanted to do something illegal. “The typical citizen would not need to know detailed information as to US Supreme Court case law regarding search and seizure because they are not transporting illegal substances in fear of being caught,” it stated.

Yep. No need to know the Constitution. We’ll take care of it for you. The Constitution is only for criminals to use. If you’re a law-abiding citizen, you don’t need to know it. In fact, maybe we should start getting the records of anyone who downloads the text of the Constitution and search their homes. If they want to read the Constitution, they must be doing something wrong. Too bad we couldn’t get the framers to write it in Latin. The priests had the right idea.

…

This would be a good time to promote 10 Rules for Dealing with Police and also to mention Scott Morgan’s recent article in the Huffington Post: 5 Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even if You Have Nothing to Hide) to which I added a sixth:

Here’s reason 6. You are the employer and the police officer is the employee, being paid with your tax dollars. As an employer, why would you want him wasting his time searching for something that isn’t there when he should be doing his job? Be the employer, not the victim.

El Paso

County Commissioner Willie Gandara, Jr.:

In September, he said in a statement that drug legalization was a bad idea for the country in a story in the El Paso Times.

“Legalizing drugs is the coward practice of combating cartels, it is an insult to our men and women in law enforcement, and the laziest form of parenting our children and youth about the effects of drugs,” Gandara said.

Gandara said that he could not back former city Rep. Beto O’Rourke in his bid for Congress because O’Rourke had advocated the legalization of marijuana as a way of taking money from Mexican drug cartels.

“As a parent, it is common sense for me to support Congressman (Silvestre) Reyes who is against the legalization of drugs. Unfortunately, on (sic) this upcoming primary election we will have many wolves in sheep’s clothing running for office who are seeking election with an ulterior agenda to legalize drugs.”

Yep. That’s a hard-core prohibitionist, all right.

…

Yesterday, Willie Gandara was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges.

…

Ethan Nadelmann asks the interesting question:

Hypocrisy or self interest?

… but Harper won’t listen.

U.S. law panel urges Harper to avoid ‘costly failure’ of mandatory minimum pot punishments

A high-profile group of current and former U.S. law enforcement officials has sent a letter to the Harper government with a surprising message: Take it from us, the war on drugs has been a “costly failure.”

The officials are urging the Canadian government to reconsider mandatory minimum sentences for “minor” marijuana offences under its “tough-on-crime bill” and said a better approach would be to legalize marijuana under a policy of taxation and regulation.

“We are … extremely concerned that Canada is implementing mandatory minimum sentencing legislation for minor marijuana-related offences similar to those that have been such costly failures in the United States,” the letter reads. “These policies have bankrupted state budgets as limited tax dollars pay to imprison non-violent drug offenders at record rates instead of programs that can actually improve community safety.”

Something about this drug war – in the decades that it’s been waged, politicians have been completely uninterested in learning from the past.

But the Harper government remains unswayed.

In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the government has “no intention to decriminalize or legalize marijuana” and “remains committed to ensuring criminals are held fully accountable for their actions.”

Link

“State prisons have a 96% occupancy rate, while federal prisons are at almost 140% of capacity. And the prison population [is] growing at 5% annually. The market potential also remains huge, with only 8% of prisons privatized so far.”

The only possible downside they note is the potential for legalization of marijuana.

Link

The newest member of the San Francisco Police Department drools a little when he gets excited.

Mark A.R. Kleiman has an excellent OpEd in The American Interest: Triage in the Drug War

In particular, Kleiman’s analysis of the falsehoods and fallacies of the drug war really hits the mark.

Certainly, he has a more optimistic view of the potential uses of prohibition in certain circumstances than I, but in an article discussing short-term triage, that’s OK – it’s not all going to come down at once anyway. As far as his solutions, the HOPE program appears to be a good one and his “big stick” approach to reducing the violence of the most violent drug trafficking organizations might work (although I fear that without an accompanying “carrot” it’s likely to get bogged down).

As some of you know, Mark and I have had some blistering differences over the years regarding drug policy, but I’ve always felt that when it comes to analyzing the problems with prohibition, he really does understand.

Update: It seems the consensus is that the readers are much less willing to give Kleiman any props for what he wrote in this OpEd.

Of course Mark Kleiman is still a prohibitionist apologist and he has a drug policy blind spot the size of Texas when it comes to his fear of cocaine. That hasn’t changed, nor do I expect it to change in the near future. His opinions, however, are widely respected in certain circles and it is nice to see him publicly dismantling core drug warrior arguments, particularly without the usual obligatory unsupported plague-on-both-your-houses/ but-the-legalizers-are-just-as-bad statement.

Link

“It is time we were honest about the problems we face with the drug trade. Drugs are a source of criminal profit, and that has led to shootings and even murders. Just like we learned in the 1920s with the prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of marijuana is fueling violent activity,” the mayor said in the written version of his speech. […]

“I know every one of the city council members sitting to my left and right believe as I do: it’s time for this state to legalize marijuana, and stop the violence, stop the incarceration, stop the erosion of civil liberties, and urge the federal government to stop the failed war on drugs.”

Hope for the future

Check out this outstanding OpEd by Brown University Junior Jared Moffat: U.S. drug policies are a crime against humanity

Myanmar declares a war on opium

Gee, I wonder why nobody thought of that before. A war on drugs? Yeah, that’ll work.

“Every year the international community spends millions of dollars (on anti-narcotics initiatives) in countries like Afghanistan and Colombia, and the outcome is not satisfactory,” Sit Aye, senior legal advisor to President Thein Sein, said in an interview. “Here, with international assistance, we guarantee to wipe out the opium problem by 2014.”

Abraham Lincoln Was A Hempster

Some enjoyable reading for Presidents’ Day.

Interesting reading over at Cato Unbound for those who like philosophical discussions about law and rights: What is Due Process?

It’s an entire series of articles and responses on the subject. I’m particularly impressed with much of what Tim Sandefur has to say in the discussion:

My point here is to explain briefly how the Constitution’s promise that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” means not only that government must take certain procedural steps (hearings, trials, and so forth) when it imposes a deprivation, but also that some acts are off limits for government, “regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them.”

In a later response (Is Everything Congress Passes Really a Law?), Sandefur passes on this gem from Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 33:

acts of the [federal government] which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers…will [not] become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union…only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government. It will not, I presume, have escaped observation, that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution

Somewhat odd article in Christian Science Monitor: Why military hawks are leading drug legalization debate in Latin America