Drug WarRant

Red Ribbon Week 2011 Launches New Contest: “It’s Up To Me To Be Drug Free”

Exactly. It’s up to me. Not up to the government, or the schools, or my employer, or some busybody who decided that a plant is immoral. It’s my decision.

It’s up to me to be drug free. And nobody else.

“Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society” discusses Eric Sterling’s blog and gives a shout-out to Drug WarRant.

Over at “At Painful Truth: The Entrapment of America’s Sick read Branded and see how our drug war attacks people in so many ways, including their dignity as individuals.

New Mexico couple says no to DEA drug raid — asked for warrant, the DEA leaves.

New Ken Burns PBS Documentary Brings “Prohibition” Lesson to Modern America at LEAP

Justice Stevens indicates he was wrong to uphold special Texas approach to death sentencing

“I really think that I’ve thought over a lot of cases I’ve written over the years. And I really wouldn’t want to do any one of them over…With one exception,” he told me. “My vote in the Texas death case. And I think I do mention that in that case, I think that I came out wrong on that,” Stevens said.

If I could chat with him for 20 minutes about Caballes v. Illinois, I think I could convince him that he was wrong on two cases.

I’m busy reading a book about evil and an eternal battle.

Statement of Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island refusing to implement medical marijuana compassionate centers.
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WCTV

Despite a new survey that shows seven out of ten Floridians support drug testing welfare recipients,but former White House Drug Policy Coordinator Barry McCaffrey says the testing is counterproductive.[…]

Asked about Florida’s new policy of testing welfare recipients…some of whom are returning veterans, McCaffrey says the policy is misguided.

“What kind of sense does that make? You’ve got to make the barriers to entering rehabilitation low. You want people in treatment,” McCaffrey said.

From Ethan Baron in the Winnipeg Free Press, this is certainly a … graphic way of getting the point across.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.

It really points out the legislators like to pass laws with no sense of proportionality of sentencing or proper reasoning. It’s just a constant stream of “let’s get tough” as they pull new sentencing structures out of thin air (or someplace worse).

The problem with this OpEd is that it’s likely to have little impact on those passing the laws. They’ll just decide they need to increase the sentencing for child rape.

As a follow-up to the story of the New York Police Commissioner asking cops to obey the law, the New York Times has a powerful editorial: Trouble With Marijuana Arrests

Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department came forth with too little, too late when he issued a memo directing officers not to arrest people caught with small amounts of marijuana unless the drug is in plain public view. A 1977 law decriminalized minor possession, yet tens of thousands are arrested every year. […]

While the memo, reported by WNYC last week, is an important step, it does not by itself end the problem. The United States Justice Department and New York lawmakers should investigate the legality of practices that led to the arrests of hundreds of thousands of people since the mid-1990s. […]

This policing practice has damaged young lives and deserves deeper scrutiny by federal and state monitors.

I saw a production of The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman last night. It’s an important piece of theatre, but it has always been a supremely unenjoyable experience for me seeing it performed. I just end up getting pissed off at the close-minded moralists who end up destroying the lives of good people, and the sheep who go along with them allowing it to happen. The same is true for me with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible – an extraordinary play and I hate watching it.

Unfortunately, while those two plays are fictional, the characters in The Children’s Hour and The Crucible are real, and live today, manifesting themselves in people like Rick Santorum.

[in reference to states’ rights issues of gay marriage and marijuana legalization, his spokesman writes] “Senator Santorum is certainly an advocate for states’ rights, but he believes as Abraham Lincoln – that states do not have the right to legalize moral wrongs.”

And thus the destruction of peoples’ lives through denying marriage and jailing plant users becomes a moral imperative akin (in their small minds) to freeing the slaves.

Yes, it’s one more play that I find extremely unenjoyable to watch, but this one isn’t in the theatre.

Of course, to us, the war on drugs is far from an ignored war — we’re dealing with it every day.

And yet, José Fernandez López in the Huffington Post points out that it is ignored in some of the most important places.

In one of his widely read columns, journalist Andrés Oppenheimer complained last week that President Barack Obama, in his speech to the United Nations, didn’t mention Mexico at any time and the impact that the war on drugs is generating in the country. “President Obama talked at length about Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Cote D’Ivori — about almost every major conflict, except the one right next to the United States,” wrote Oppenheimer. […]

Oppenheimer stressed that the war on drugs “is a bloody conflict that, in addition to leaving a huge death toll, is becoming the biggest obstacle to economic growth in the region by draining government resources away from education and health, scaring away investments, and killing tourism.” Nothing is truer than this. But in my opinion, this is not the only reason why it is inexcusable that the American presidents — the current and the previous — take the ostrich position and decide to ignore the problem on stages as big and important as the United Nations meetings.

And it’s not just on the international stage that this war is ignored.

Check out President Obama’s remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner on Saturday.

He talked about the “hard-hit black community” and addresssed unemployment, and poverty, and education, and housing, and health care, but not a word about the drug war. He talked about marching against injustice even when they’re turning the hoses on you and in the face o troopers and teargas, but never mentioned the troops that occupy those communities today.

Yes, in the halls of power, it’s often The Ignored War. Because they don’t like our answer, and they don’t have one of their own.

For those who haven’t heard, there was some pretty huge news on Friday in New York:

Police Commissioner Calls on NYPD to Stop Improper Marijuana Arrests

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued an internal order to the New York City Police Department commanding officers to stop arresting people for small amounts of marijuana possession, if the marijuana was never in public view. The directive comes at a time when the NYPD is taking increasing heat about alleged improper marijuana arrests.

Kelly’s Operations Order landed on the desk of police supervisors this week, and a copy of it was provided to WNYC.

The order says:

Questions have been raised about the processing of certain marihuana arrests. At issue is whether the circumstances under which uniformed members of the service recover small amounts of marihuana (less than 25 grams) from subjects in a public place support the charge of Criminal Possession of Marihuana in the Fifth Degree[…]

The specific circumstances in question include occasions when the officers recover marihuana pursuant to a search of the subject’s person or upon direction of the subject to surrender the contents of his/her pockets or other closed container. A crime will not be charged to an individual who is requested or compelled to engage in the behavior that results in the public display of marihuana.

Given how many arrests there have been in New York, and how much it appears that this stop-and-frisk technique has been used on a regular basis to trick subjects into becoming “arrest-able,” this is a huge victory.

And it’s happening because of the work that so many reformers have done in terms of bringing these outrageous practices to light.

And yet…

It’s a bittersweet victory.

It seems oddly pathetic to get excited about a police commissioner suggesting to the police that they obey the law and stop violating the rights of individuals.

The laws on the books are ones we want to eliminate and yet we’re having to work to get the police to only enforce those laws and not create new ones themselves.

And yes, we should be happy about what has been accomplished and the number of people who may now benefit (although it doesn’t help all those who have been arrested in the past, nor does it stop an officer from doing it anyway and claiming they didn’t).

So, I’m very excited about this victory…

but still…

Terror and Drugs! Good and Evil! Eternal War!

Yes, it’s Paul Chabot. Back in April, I mentioned the upcoming release of this former drug czar advisor’s book “Eternal Battle Against Evil”

Now it’s out. And just in case you’re not frightened enough to buy this book and join the fight against evil, check out this video promo.

http://youtu.be/T2UqG8hi5Ps

The cover now proclaims “Caution: Details may be disturbing to some readers.” The book is available at Amazon.com, where the reviews are currenly 100% 5-star raves – all from people who have not ever reviewed anything else, and have not bought the book on Amazon (I’m not suggesting anyone do that in reverse – I’m not a fan of using reviews to make a point – but you can always down-vote reviews that are nothing more than sycophantic promotion.)

I’m pretty sure I wrote them back in April with this offer, but it still stands… if they send me a review copy, I’ll be happy to review it here on Drug WarRant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK7hZ9CxCfU

Absolutely brilliant. Lampoons so many cultural phenomena with a bizarrely off-beat humor. I think I’ve just become a Fiber One fan.

Check out the entire over-the-top page of this viral marketing campaign: Cheech and Chong’s Magic Brownie Adventure