Drug WarRant

Colombian President Juana Manuel Santos has been stirring things up a bit.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos called on the U.S. and Europe on Saturday to break the taboo and start a global debate on the legalization of drugs, reiterating his country would not oppose drug decriminalization.

Santos and Nicaraguan writer and former vice-President Sergio Ramirez discussed the possibility of legalizing drugs and the impact on Latin America, during a debate at the literature and arts Hay Festival in the coastal city of Cartagena.

“I know that this can’t be the opinion of a state or the president of the republic, but I am a normal citizen, so I can [say it]. The solution is decriminalizing drugs. It must be decriminalized,” Ramirez was quoted by Colombia’s presidential website.

“I am not against this,” Santos responded. “And I am saying this as president of the republic. This decision would be acceptable for Colombia if taken by the entire world.”

That’s right. A sitting president.

The U.S. has responded:

The United States “respects,” but does not support Colombian President Santos’ call for a global debate on drug legalization, said U.S. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman Tuesday.

Sherman, who is in Colombia to prepare U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Summit of the Americas in April, told newspaper El Tiempo that she “appreciated that presidents say what they think and of course I respect their points of view.”

OK. Polite, diplomatic. And the expected non-support for the idea.

However, “President Obama does not support legalization. What we do support is the intense work relation we have with Colombia and with President Santos with the aim of liberating us from this evil.”

Whoa. Liberating us from this evil? Sounds like a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer.

You see, the problem is that once you identify something as “evil,” you’ve completely shut off any notion of having a rational discourse or of analyzing options.

And, by definition, drugs are not and cannot be “evil.” Drugs are inanimate objects, incapable of moral action.

….

With more and more foreign leaders and former leaders calling for real change, it won’t be long before the U.S. position of drug policy becomes the outlier, and it becomes harder and harder for the U.S. to impose their war on the rest of the world.

Top cop says 12yo girl’s strip search justified

That’s the world in which we live — the world of the drug war.

Josh Gerstein at Politico had a prediction that Obama would answer a marijuana question last night based on a conversation with a Google staffer:

Google is signaling that it won’t let any single issue, like marijuana legalization, dominate its online question-and-answer session with President Obama Monday afternoon.

But don’t despair, NORML fans, as it seems you stand a good chance of getting a query before the commander in chief.

“We’re not releasing questions ahead of time, but I should note that a marijuana question was asked and answered in last year’s YouTube interview with the president,” Google staffer Abbi Tatton said in response to a POLITICO inquiry about how the web giant plans to handle the usual proliferation of pot-related questions put forward by the online audience.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the Google staffer was signaling that they considered the question already asked and answered.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter whether the President was asked. Any answer he would have given would have been dismissively vague. It’s child’s play to come up with a non-answer, such as

I understand that these concerns exist, and the fact that a dialogue is happening is a good thing. And yet, on the other hand, surrendering is not the solution to our drug problems. This is why our White House Office on Drug Control Policy is pursuing a balanced approach that is successfully working to reduce the harms caused by drugs. Thank you for your question and your years of service to our country.

In some ways, it’s actually better for us that Obama continues to dodge the question and the Google chose not to answer it. The question and issue are still getting play… Check this out:

President not asked about legalizing pot despite thousands of questions on the subject

TAMPA, Fla. — When the president’s Google Plus meeting got started on Monday, the commander-in-chief had time to answer questions about his dancing and singing abilities, how he’ll spend his anniversary, and even what he thought about comedians making jokes about politicians. But what he didn’t answer were any of the hundreds of questions submitted for the event about legalizing marijuana.

In fact, CBS reported 18 of the 20 most popular questions for his online meeting had to do with cannabis, with the number one ranked YouTube question coming from a retired police officer who asked, “What do you say to (a) growing voter constituency that wants more changes to drug policy than you have delivered in your first term?” […]

Even on the campaign trail the subject is getting attention, with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul supporting the legalization of marijuana. […]

Last year, the president did say legalization is a legitimate topic but that he does not support the move. Yet, with so many questions on the issue being submitted on Monday, it’s fair to say this is a subject that is not about to burn out anytime soon.

It’s gotten to the point that every time that President Obama decides to “listen” to the people, we get a lot of coverage. Not a bad thing.

If you believe that hiring a drug-sniffing dog to go through your house is a good way to get connected to your child’s life, then you might want to re-think your entire parenting approach.

Dog for hire sniffs out drug problems

Parents concerned about whether their children are using narcotics, businesses wanting to enforce their drug-free workplace policies, and schools that want to keep drugs out of their parking lots and classrooms now have a new place to turn for help.

Frankfort native Brent Snyder has started Snyders K-9 Scent Detection, which uses a trained and certified canine to locate the presence of drugs by doing searches of houses, cars, factories and other workplaces.

Did you know that Maricopa County, Arizona does the training for “85 percent of all drug-recognition experts in North America”? That’s the shocker (to me, at least) in this article: RCMP halts training with U.S. force over abuse findings

Training of police officers from across Canada in drug recognition techniques has been called into question after the U.S. Department of Justice censured an Arizona-based police department that partnered with Mounties for the program.

The federal RCMP suspended the program last week after learning of allegations against the force, including racism and abuse of authority.

The allegations first surfaced when the Justice Department issued a report in mid-December outlining its findings from a civil rights violations probe into the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The probe found “reasonable cause to believe” the force engages in “unconstitutional policing,” including racial profiling, retaliating against people who criticized its policies and disregarding basic legal obligations.

It suggested Latinos were being unlawfully stopped, detained and arrested, and that inmates who don’t speak English were punished for failing to understand commands and refused basic services.

None of that, of course, is any surprise to me. We’ve been quite aware of the rogue nature of that particular police force and its disdain for petty niceties like individual rights or the Constitution. I just didn’t know that they were the ones training officers in drug recognition. I see articles all the time these days about a local officer somewhere having received “certification” in drugged driving assessment, and wondered who was providing this “expert” training. Now I know.

[B.C. Civil Liberties Association Executive Director David] Eby said he’s pleased with the RCMP’s swift action against the “rogue” force, and thinks it is appropriate for the Mounties to cast doubt on the adequacy of the training program.

“There’s a serious question about why those prisoners were in the lockup, given the arresting policies and procedures of this police force,” he said in an interview on Sunday. “Were the prisoners consenting to that? How did they end up in the lockup? Would they just round up a whole bunch of people during a training program?”

Eby called on the RCMP to conduct a retroactive review to ascertain whether the training officers have received can be relied upon. He also noted there may be future implications in criminal court proceedings.

He added he hopes the scenario awakens the RCMP to the risks of relying on American police as service providers.

Ain’t that the truth.

In related news…

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The federal government should help police departments nationwide obtain the tools and training needed to attack a rising scourge of driving under the influence, two U.S. senators said Sunday.

Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Mark Pryor of Arkansas proposed that federal funding in a pending transportation funding bill be used for research and to train police. They said police have no equipment and few have training in identifying drugged drivers, who don’t show the same outward signs of intoxication as drunken drivers do, such as slurred speech.

I find the argument that always seems to show up in this area quite ironic — If only those people on drugs would show some sign of impairment so we could arrest them for being impaired. We know they must be impaired although we don’t have any actual data to prove it. It’s just that they’re able to hide their impairment so we can’t detect it.

Again, to reiterate what I’ve said in the past, I’m all for getting dangerous drivers off the street, and if you have a reliable way to identify impairment, I’ll support that, but if you’re arresting drivers because of the presence of drug metabolites rather than the presence of impairment, then I have a problem with it.

I don’t think it takes much special training to detect when someone is drugged up to the point of being impaired. It just takes special training to detect someone who has taken drugs but isn’t impaired in any significant way.

I got an email from President Barack Obama on Friday. I didn’t realize he knew me, but it was a nice letter and apparently he wants to hear from me personally!

The day after I delivered my State of the Union Address to Congress, I took off to connect with ordinary Americans around the country, talk more about our Blueprint for an America Built to Last, and get some feedback.

That’s why I’m writing you.

I guess my presence on the internet finally paid off. He realizes that I’m someone he can turn to for guidance.

On Monday we’re going to do something a little different. At 5:30 p.m. ET, I’ll walk into the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office, take a seat, and kick-off the first-ever completely virtual town hall from the White House.

All week, people have been voting on questions and submitting their own, and a few of them will join me for a live chat.

What do you want to ask me?

This is going to be an exciting way to talk about the steps that we need to take together at this make-or-break moment for the middle class.

I suppose I should ask him about drug policy. Probably nobody else has done that yet, and I bet he’s anxious to have the opportunity to talk about legalization.

…

Seriously, here is the actual top vote-getter for tomorrow night, from LEAP’s Stephen Downing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0IpiATxdR4

Drug WarRant was down for most of the day Sunday due to massive problems at DreamHost that affected a large number of virtual private servers. Nothing directly connected to this site. Sorry for the temporary lack of couch.

Posting has been extremely light the past few days as I’ve been exceptionally busy with a variety of diverse and interesting projects (description after the fold)

Wayne State Law School symposium on the federal-state dichotomy on marijuana. Kevin Sabet starts at about 22 minutes, and Dan Riffle, Legislative Analyst for MPP starts at about 43 minutes, and he gets in some really nice counters to Kevin Sabet’s “extremism.” Dan talks about tax policy as it could relate to marijuana sales (interesting).

I haven’t listened to the whole video yet, but there’s some really good stuff here.

Continuing on the theme of the fed-state dichotomy, we have Can a Strong Coalition of Pot Activists Define Medical Marijuana Regulation — And Avoid the Feds?

A broad coalition of California advocates has filed a statewide medical marijuana regulation initiative aimed at ending the years-long confusion over what is and what is not allowed under state law by explicitly allowing sales and legalizing dispensaries statewide absent affirmative local popular votes to ban them.

It’s an ambitious move to further codify the medical marijuana system and make it harder for the feds to interfere, but time is short for it to get on the ballot.

Mark Kleiman proposed a design problem as an assignment to his students: “How can you tax and regulate, at the state level, something that remains a Federal felony?”

Turns out that a group of his students came up with a pretty smart notion. Here’s their idea: Designing State-Level Cannabis Legalization

It could work — purely intended as a short term solution until the feds get out of the game, obviously. The idea is to make it difficult for the feds to get in there and bust operations (too many in this instance) while also not keeping state records the feds could seize that are trackable to individual sellers.

Virginia Sheriffs Addicted to Drug Cash

Michael P. Botticelli to be nominated as Deputy Director of the ONDCP

Interesting piece about a shadowy drug store – the Silk Road on a “secret” internet… Amazon.com for Illegal Drugs?

Continue reading →

BBC: Richard Branson drugs policy advice to David Cameron

It’s up to politicians, I think, to get the message across, and sometimes to ignore a newspaper like the Daily Mail and just get on and do what they believe is right. If you talk to any individual politician they know what’s right. […] [David Cameron]’s got to be brave as Prime Minister. You’ve got to do what’s right for the country and what’s right for society and individuals, and treat them like your children, or treat them like your brothers and sisters who have got a problem. You’d never throw your family into prison – you’d help them.

BBC: 100 years of the war on drugs. Interesting, though ultimately superficial account of the war on drugs over the past century.

U.S. spying on Mexicans using drones?

But does the U.S. government ever risk the international fallout of using the aircrafts’ high-tech surveillance abilities to take a peek south of the border – or share what they see with Mexican counterparts fighting for their lives?

The American public likely never will know.

“Officially, no,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, whose district hugs the Texas-Mexico border. “I will leave it at that.” […]

Exactly where they fly is classified.

The agency steps gingerly around Mexico surveillance. […]

She wouldn’t discuss whether the planes had flown counternarcotics missions over Mexico, saying Mexico should answer questions about its airspace.

The office of Mexican President Felipe Calderón declined comment.

‘Blind mules’ unknowingly ferry drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border – a scary situation. Always know what’s in the trunk of your car when you cross the border.

Americans for Forfeiture Reform report on another cash grab, this time by prosecutors. Buried in a proposed New York State bill is a measure that “was inserted at the request of prosecutors, especially Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.”

The measure increases the percentage of forfeiture takings that the DA’s office can keep. It also wildly expands what can be seized.

The worst part of the bill would allow courts to forfeit any property that is somehow involved in an offense if the person charged with the offense jumps bail.

2. IN THE EVENT OF A PENDING CRIMINAL CASE IN WHICH A DEFENDANT HAS ABSCONDED FROM THE JURISDICTION OF THE COURT, THE COURT MAY ORDER FORFEITURE OF ANY PROPERTY, REAL OR PERSONAL, CONSTITUTING, OR DERIVED FROM, PROCEEDS OBTAINED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, AS THE RESULT OF ANY VIOLATION OF THE THIS CHAPTER, AS WELL AS ANY PROPERTY, REAL OR PERSONAL, INVOLVED IN ANY VIOLATION OF THIS CHAPTER, OR ANY PROPERTY TRACEABLE TO SUCH PROPERTY.

Note that it does not limit forfeitures to the property of the accused that jump bail. Rather, property involved in an offense where a defendant absconds from jurisdiction is subject to forfeiture. Thus, your property is subject to seizure if someone skips bail and your property is allegedly involved in, or traceable to property involved in, an offense that gave rise to their criminal charge. As stated, you needn’t have any culpability to lose your property. Indeed, you might face the forfeiture of your property because of a crime against you or your property.

There’s a lot more here. These forfeiture schemes are really bad law, but what makes it worse is that the thieves themselves are writing the laws that let them steal “legally.”