Drug WarRant

Ron Paul: Drug War In U.S. Has Racist Origins by Ryan Grim in the Huffington Post.

Gary Johnson Goes Full Libertarian: “I am excited. I am liberated. And I am committed to shaking the system as it has never been shaken before.” Mike Riggs at Reason reports on Gary Johnson’s official entry into the Libertarian Party nomination race.

In this article: Legalization a Controversial Weapon in Mexico’s Drug War, we find the usual talk about Latin American leaders calling for discussions of legalization, and Kerlikowse’s nonsense rebuttals.

But I enjoyed the go-it-alone suggestion:

This has led some advocates to suggest Mexico should go it alone. At the very least, they say, allowing drug production and sale in Mexico would relieve law enforcement of the obligation to fight cartels.

According to Castaneda, that would make stopping the flow of drugs – and the violence that goes with it – the US’s problem.

‘You don’t have to do it,’ he said. ‘You tell the Americans, you guys do it, if you’re so excited about this. But we don’t have to do it anymore because it’s not the law in Mexico.”

That would sure ruffle some feathers.

If that were to happen, it would be interesting to see how quickly some ignorant Representative from the southern states called for a military invasion of Mexico.

Sad news. Pain treatment advocate and leader of the Pain Relief Network Siobhan Reynolds was killed this weekend in a plane crash.

See Radley Balko’s excellent post on Siobhan along with his links to others who have written tributes.

I never got to meet her, although I corresponded with her on occasion, and she liked Drug WarRant. She was absolutely tireless in her advocacy and made a real and lasting difference. Much of the national awareness of the government imposed deficit in pain relief is due to Siobhan Reynolds’ efforts.

She’ll be missed.

DEA, IRS give local police ‘holiday gift’ from confiscated drug money

OAKLAND — Federal agents issued the ultimate stocking stuffer Thursday when they gave more than $1.2 million in drug money confiscated from a former Hayward medical marijuana store to five Bay Area police agencies.

Defy the will of local citizens, ignore state law, and give your true allegiance to the feds and ye shall be richly rewarded.

I’ll be traveling to spend the holidays with my parents. For all those who are traveling, drive safely – don’t take any chances, and if you get tired, pull over and take a nap. Tired driving is probably the worst impairment for driving out there.

With the holidays, the roads will also be heavily patrolled. If you do get stopped and the officer wants to look through your car, just say “I don’t consent to searches.” Remember that consenting to a search is extremely un-American.

Consenting to a search shows your disregard for the Constitution and your willingness to undermine important principles within it. When you consent, you are saying that you want to suspend the Constitution for a bit. That’s unacceptable.

Consenting to a search also wastes taxpayer dollars in a period of budget crisis by taking up the time of an employee who should be working on protecting and serving rather than digging through your trunk.

Consenting to a search is also stupid on a practical level. Officers are generally not required to fix anything they break while searching your car, and if you’ve ever given a ride to someone else and something fell out of their pocket into the seat cushion, the officers are probably not going to believe that you didn’t know anything about it.

For more useful tips on your rights, get 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, which is advertised on the lower right side of this page.

Happy and safe holidays to you all!

Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No is an extremely important OpEd by Paul Butler in the New York Times (and that makes it additionally important because of the reach).

This is something that we’ve talked about for years, here, but it’s really nice to see a well-written compelling piece on jury nullification in the Times.

I was struck by some of the comments. First, it was amazing how many people simply weren’t aware of the notion of jury nullification and that it was their right (and responsibility), despite what many judges and prosecutors would have you believe.

Second, I was somewhat shocked by the strong reaction against it by some (usually without much logic or understanding of the law).

Some were bizarre:

Cassandra: This is dangerous stuff. What if a juror in a death penalty case decides that the evidence is not legally sufficient to justify a death sentence, but chooses to override the instructions given and sentence the defendant to death “as a matter of conscience”. That leaves the juror feeling fine, and morally justified, but leaves the defendant improperly sentenced to die.

or

Peter Lynn As wonderful as it sounds, jury nullification is a very dangerous, bad idea. It allows twelve people to overthrow the law of the land. There is already a mechanism in place to change laws; campaign against them, get elected, convince a majority, pass a different law.

The idea that a small number of citizens should be able to modify the law arbitrarily is, on the face of it, silly. If I could find eleven people who agree with me that I should be able to take some of Mayor Bloomberg’s money (he would hardly miss a million or two), does that mean that I should be able to walk into his bank and walk out with his money? Not really.

Some didn’t understand the responsibility of citizenship:

Horst…The second reason I disagree is it places undue burden on the juror. It’s not a light task to determine the fate of another human being. I found it much easier when told that our only job was to determine whether the defendant was guilty of the laws as they are written, without regard to the punishment. If you introduce the idea that the juror is responsible for punishment, rather than the legal system, you’re putting an undue burden on a small group of people.

Of course, this was also the person who said, “… that was my only exposure to the law other than ‘Law and Order’.” Unfortunately, way too many Americans have been “trained” in law by that show.

There were also, fortunately, a ton of positive comments. I think that the notion of jury nullification, particularly in non-violent drug cases, is starting to spread as a reaction to the intransigence of the government in reforming this issue (and that’s exactly the purpose of jury nullification).

Here was one comment with a historical reference that I particularly enjoyed:

I couldn’t find the reference, but in school we were told that a very poor man whose family was starving stole a pig from a rich man. The jury said, ‘Not guilty if he returns the pig.’ The judge refused to accept that verdict, so the jury reconvened and returned with, ‘Not guilty and he can keep the pig.’

Latest breathless headline from the Telegraph (UK): Cocaine found in nine out of ten baby changing units

Wow! That’s the mother load for tabloid journalism: children (babies!), drugs, and statistics.

The article goes on to discuss all sorts of completely irrelevant stuff related to drugs and Amy Winehouse along with the obligatory anecdotal story of a former addict:

“Coke came first, my child came second.”

So, what’s with the baby changing tables? Cocaine traces were found on 92 of 100 of these in a particular area including ones in “shopping centres, hospitals, police stations, courts and churches.”

Hmmm, seems a little odd to me (unless you’ve got some thrill-seeking coke user who is bent on hitting every baby-changing table in the region). Who were the scientists doing this study?

The team of Real Radio journalists who carried out the study… The tests, carried out by using specialist wipes…

Oh.

Bet you five bucks that there’s a common element like baby powder that causes false positives with those “specialist wipes.” In fact, a little googling will show that baby wipes have been found to cause false positives in certain drug testing devices.

But that’s not as interesting a story, is it?

I haven’t talked too much about the political candidates out there lately, but it’s been a pretty good year for us — having both Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in the race (even though Johnson has been excluded from most of the debates) has meant that drug policy reform and legalization has hit the news as part of a Presidential campaign more often than usual.

Now it appears that Gary Johnson will be seeking the Libertarian Party nomination (to be announced next week), and Ron Paul is now the frontrunner in the Iowa Caucuses.

Ron Paul’s climb has been something to watch, despite the attempts by both the media and the GOP to discount him. In years past, it was easier for them to marginalize him as “the crazy one” or by re-airing things like the newsletter he published back in the 80s (something that’s now re-surfacing for the umpteenth time as Obama supporters get nervous). But this year, the rest of the GOP field is so completely wacked-out certifiably nuts that someone with an actual brain is seen as a refreshing change. And whether or not you agree with all his policies or past practices, there’s no doubt that Paul is smart and consistent, with a solid track record. You know what you’re getting.

Gary Johnson has lacked the established grass-roots machine that Ron Paul has – something that was absolutely necessary to get past the marginalization efforts of the establishment parties who are completely opposed to any kind of actual (as opposed to professed) limited government candidates.

As the Libertarian candidate, he’ll have another opportunity to get his message across. It’s a shame that he’s been left out so much. I have a number of Republican friends – sane ones – usually fiscally conservative, but socially open-minded – and when they’ve been introduced to Gary Johnson, they’ve immediately embraced his views and usually said, “Why isn’t he running for President?” Sigh.

I have absolutely no idea how this will all play out, but love the notion of two Presidential candidates seriously talking about drug policy reform.

Howard Meitiner, President and CEO of Phoenix House, has an OpEd in the Huffington Post: The Argument Against Marijuana

His thesis is a variation on “Think of the children!…”

with the unspoken, but obvious subtext:

“… without whose exploitation we’d lose most of our $100,000,000 budget.”

Jack Marshall has a site called “Ethics Alarms” and has posted Distracted Driving, Pot, and “The Great Debate” — a reaction to the Barney Frank, George Will, et al debate.

First, he takes up the issue of federal regulations against distracted driving.

Talking on a cell phone, texting, reading a Facebook update and other forms of distracted driving do endanger others, and making laws that punish fools who think keeping up with the Kardashians is worth risking the lives of my family is an easy call, ethically speaking. So a driver has to pull off the road and park before answering a call or reading a text…big deal. George needs to get out more: if he was behind the wheel with any frequency, he would know that the number of inattentive drivers weaving in and out of traffic, shifting speeds and missing lights and signals because of the Blackberry in their hands is frighteningly high.

Ethically, the trade-off is minor inconvenience—-in most cases, minor to the point of irrelevance—versus human lives saved.

He then demonstrates his scientific/ethical/analytical bona fides by stating:

Ethics, in the end, are determined by rational conclusions, based on observation, experience and analysis, about what kind of conduct and standards most benefit individuals, society and civilization. Doctrinaire elevations of minor infringements of principle to priority over undeniable risks to human life are not ethical. Ideological purity divorced from reality is no friend of ethics.

This is to show that he’s taking a rational calculus to determine the proper balance of risks and inconvenience (not sure who gets to set the scales, though).

However, this is also where his arguments turn as dumb as a box of rocks.

Let’s say he was able to show that all the various items discussed (texting, cell phone use, checking email, etc., while driving) are actually dangerous to lives, and we, for the moment, won’t bother with little technicalities like differences between people, technical solutions, etc.

In that case, I’d be perfectly happy to agree that not doing those things is worth the inconvenience.

However, that has absolutely nothing to do with a federal law.

Acting ethically is not equal to passing a law requiring people to do so. Marshall acts as though it is.

To play on his own words: laws should be determined by rational conclusions, based on observation, experience and analysis, about what kind of impact that they’ll have on the risky action, what other separate impact they’ll have, unintended consequences, and whether the risky action can be addressed in another way (such as reducing tobacco use without criminalizing it).

Unfortunately, most risk-prevention laws have no rational analysis, and this kind of idiocy is far too common. A law against doing something is actually seen as equivalent to not doing something. It is never considered that the law may have costs of its own, that it might not work, or that something other than a law might work better.

It may be that an education campaign is a better approach – getting people to choose not to ride with distracted drivers, or expressing disapproval (friends don’t let friends drive distracted). It may be that the law is unenforceable in any fair way (how will police tell the difference between GPS use and texting, etc.) or that new technology can play a part.

But saying “I’ve seen people weaving around, therefore we need a federal law” is not only irresponsible, it’s as dumb as a box of rocks.

This whole rant is just to set up the real stupidity of the piece. Next, he talks about marijuana, and it really gets surreal.

I’ll let you guys in comments have first crack at that. I may play around with it later. There’s way too much fun here to leave alone.