Drug WarRant

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

… but now he’s getting Arne Duncan, the Secretary of the Department of Education, to do it as well.

Deputy Director David K. Mineta announced at the ONDCP “blog” that Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and Secretary Duncan were reaching out to college and university leaders to prevent “illegal drug use” and “high risk drinking.”

Notice that the request is not about “high risk drug and alcohol use.” That would certainly be an appropriate goal. No, it’s really about high risk alcohol use and any marijuana use.

Why? Certainly yes, the government would want universities to not allow illegal drug use. But to specifically target, beyond it’s illegality, extra efforts to stop use in one area and abuse in another?

The answer is in Mineta’s post. The 2011 National Drug Control Strategy includes a goal of “reducing illegal drug use by ten percent within five years.” Not drug abuse. Not problem drug use. Simply drug use. And the only way to get that kind of numbers it to try to go after the non-problematic casual recreational use by young people, particularly if you can get college administrators to help you with enforcement.

So this effort is not a high-minded effort to help college students with real problems, but rather to a large extent a self-serving method of playing with numbers.

So let’s take a look at the letter sent out today by Gil Kerlikowske and Arne Duncan.

A lot of re-stating the key terms…

Illegal drug use and high-risk (binge, heavy, and underage) drinking affect every aspect of society vital to winning the future, including educating our youth and developing a competitive workforce for the new economy. […]

Together with our interagency partners, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Education are working collaboratively to prevent illegal drug use and high-risk drinking in our Nation’s college and university communities.

Then there was some discussion of academic consequences of drinking, followed by this note regarding marijuana:

Additionally, a study found that college students who used marijuana were more likely to put themselves in physical danger when under the influence, experience concentration problems, and miss class.(3)

That interested me, because I hadn’t heard this one before – that college students who got high on marijuana would put themselves in physical danger. What did that mean? It made sense for alcohol use, but marijuana?

So I went through my university library and found the referenced study: (3) Sullivan, M., & Risler, E. (2002). Understanding college alcohol abuse and academic performance: Selecting appropriate intervention strategies. Journal of College Counseling, 5 (2), 114-124.

Not a single mention of marijuana in the entire study. Nothing about stoned students in physical danger or missing classes. The whole thing was about alcohol.

Now, if a student of mine turns in a paper with a falsified citation, it’s not going to help their grade very much.

So how will university presidents grade the Drug Czar and the Secretary of Education for doing it?

…..

Update: Interestingly, there’s a petition at the White House dealing with Drug Czar lies…

Eliminate or Reform Departments whose Officers are Required by Law to Lie to the American People.

In a time of astronomical deficits, departments that are required by law to LIE to the American public should be reformed or eliminated.

The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), aka “The Drug Czar,” is one such position. […]

Some commenters have been less than thrilled with my admiration for Calderon’s use of the term “market alternatives” as a code for legalization. Sure, in an ideal world, nobody would speak in code, and everybody would understand the full meaning of the word “legalization” and not just its political coloring. And in an ideal world there would be no drug war.

Certainly, I’m no fan of Calderon, and he’s been no friend to drug policy reform. His escalation of the violent war on drugs in Mexico has resulted in thousands of deaths and ensured that the problems that exist will be much harder to solve in the future.

Lots of former heads of state have come out in favor of legalization or some form of decriminalization. Almost none have done it while in office. Yet three times in the last week, President Calderon has suggested that the drug consuming world, if it’s going to keep consuming, needs to look at market alternatives.

There’s no doubt that “market alternatives” in this sense means legalization. When you’re talking about finding an alternative to the black market while not eliminating demand, by definition that is legalization.

I’ve been getting quite a kick out of a number of the mainstream media folks trying to deal with Calderon’s statement without their heads exploding. Some have reported his statement, along with the fact that he failed to actually define “market alternatives,” and then indicating that some analysts have said Calderon may be referring to legalization. At that point in the article you can practically see the hamster running in circles in the reporter’s head as they try to come up with some other possible meaning for “market alternatives” to balance the statement… and realize that there is none.

At this point, I believe that the term “market alternatives” has the capability of forcing an epiphany among some people. I know there are a lot of people out there who have rather lazily just gotten in their head that the entire meaning of “legalization” is something akin to “allowing potheads to smoke dope.” They just haven’t spent as much time thinking about it as we have. These are the same people who don’t realize that regulated legality isn’t an oxymoron.

Calderon’s statement makes them actually come to grips with other, importantly relevant definitions.

The more that these discussions occur, the better. Here’s a nice understanding of the term from Jesse Kline at the National Post

Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.

The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.

Exactly. Market alternatives.

Personally, I’m fighting for legalization. However, I’m happy to talk with people about market alternatives to our current disastrous market policies.

I loved this one:

I’m impressed by your writing. Are you a professional or just very konwledegable?

Thanks for asking, Jenelle. I find konwledeg to be very important, and the research I do helps me to konw lots of things that I can share with you.

…

A question for the tech-savvy… This spam comment, as have many recently, merely had their URL listed as http://www.bing.com. What value do spammers get out of that? I’ve seen the same thing with Google urls. I’m pretty good at catching the ones that slip past the Akismet filter (we get about 2,000 spams a day here), but I really don’t understand this one.

I also get a lot of requests from people who want to pay me for text links, but I know that scam and never accept their money. That’s a clear effort to drive up google rankings. But what do commenters gain from linking to Bing or Google?

Oh, and regarding konwledegable… I’d like to believe that it’s someone who really messed up that word that bad, but the truth is that it’s probably part of an automatic function that sends out millions of spam comments and slightly misspells one of the words in multiple ways to escape notice from spam filters.

Anti-Drug Abuse Message Award

The Jackson County Drug Free Council recently announced that it is sponsoring an award for the Seymour Police Department DARE Soap Box Derby on Sunday on West Second Street.

According to a press release, the award is a Wal-Mart $25 gift card and it will be given to the Soap Box Derby car that sports the best anti-drug abuse message.

The public is invited to participate in the activities.

I’ve got the perfect anti-drug abuse message to put on a soap box car:

Magnetic version to put on your car available in the Drug WarRant CafePress store.

There have been a number of events in the past few years where the public has had an opportunity to put forth their views of what should be changed in government and vote in some way to identify the most important ones.

In every case, some form of legalizing marijuana and/or ending the drug war statement has made it to the top (or even all of the top 10).

Turns out, it’s not just Americans…

Israel: Trajtenberg Committee asked to legalize pot

The highest ranked recommendation to the Trajtenberg Committee, according to the committee’s official website, is that “the legalization of cannabis in Israel is worth over NIS 1 billion ($270 million) a year.”

Of course, in the U.S., when similar results came forward, President Obama decided he didn’t like the answer:

… noting the huge number of questions about marijuana legalization and remarking with a chuckle, “I don’t know what that says about the online audience.”

“The answer is no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,” he said, as the audience in the room applauded and joined him in a laugh.

On the other hand, in Israel, Knesset Member Einat Wilf had an actual coherent response

She argues that “if the Trajtenberg Committee does recommend legalizing cannabis and taxing it accordingly – as many of the readers suggested – it would solve three issues at once: It would have done what’s right from a social perspective – it is clear today following research and on the basis of a recently published international report submitted to the UN that decriminalizing the use of cannabis and making it a social welfare issue yields better results insofar as its use and will limit its harm to society; it would also create another substantial source of income for the government and can be used to implement the committee’s recommendations.

“Furthermore, it would take the money out of the hands of crime families and the enemies of the State. The funds in question are quite substantial and these days, following my request, the Knesset’s research and information center is engaged in the estimation of the figures involved.”

That’s what you do when you ask the public for their concerns and they give them to you.

The U.S. has another opportunity starting today.

The White House has just launched We the People on WhiteHouse.gov, which President Obama says is “giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them.”

The question is whether there is anyone on the other end of that line who is interested in hearing what Americans have to say.

Still, I’m all for creating a petition, and participating in my First Amendment rights and responsibilities.

Seems to me that one petition should essentially be focused on the goal of Barney Frank’s bill HR 2306 Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. In other words, simply get the federal government out of marijuana and let the states figure it out.

Another one might have to do with having a national discussion about different models of legalization and how they might work to reduce the power of the black market. (and that the head-in-the-sand approaches like “legalization is not in our vocabulary” is unacceptable in a science-based discussion.)

What are your thoughts? (And feel free to use the up and down votes in comments to rank ideas.)

Absolutely scathing article in the Village Voice about New York Mayor Bloomberg: Young Men’s Initiative: The White Mayor’s Burden – Bloomberg aims to help the young black and Latino men he has been throwing in jail for a decade

Consider that, according to a study by Professor Harry Levine of Queens College, Giuliani “only” averaged arresting 24,487 people a year for marijuana. By 2008, Bloomberg was averaging 36,069 pot arrests annually.

In 2010, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, he arrested 50,383 people—”more than capacity seating in Yankee Stadium.”

In 2011, he’s on track to arrest more than 60,000 by year’s end.

Now, while you’re still sober, take a wild guess: What color and gender were most of those arrestees? […]

And now it has come out that the most overpoliced, harassed, questionably searched, often illegally arrested New Yorkers are exactly the citizens the mayor suddenly wants to “help.”

His Young Men’s Initiative, which Bloomberg announced last month to great fanfare, will lavish $127 million of public and private funds on young black and Latino men over the final years of the mayor’s tenure.

This is utterly befuddling to his critics, who have fought him over the past decade as he has suspended young black and Latino males in schools, stopped and frisked them on the streets, and locked them up in record numbers.

Via VOCAL New York… The Drug Czar is in New York today, visiting with DA Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. in Washington Heights to discuss their “progress” in fighting the war on drugs.

A group of New Yorkers (members of VOCAL and New Yorkers who believe we need an end to the drug war) are there at this moment protesting the drug czar’s war.

Billionaire Peter Lewis: My War On Drug Laws at Forbes.

It’s become sort of a central philanthropic interest of mine—by no means my only interest. But I’m pretty clear. I’ve thought it through, and I’m trying to accomplish something. My mission is to reduce the penalties for growing, using and selling marijuana. It’s that simple.

I’ve been conducting a great deal of research on public opinion on marijuana. Change in this area is inevitable, much like the movement toward equal rights for gays and lesbians. An ever shrinking fraction of the country resists changing marijuana laws, largely for moral reasons. But change is coming. It’s just a question of when and how we get there.

The L.A. Times reports on a new RAND Corp study.

Medical marijuana dispensaries — with storerooms of high-priced weed, registers brimming with cash and some clientele more interested in getting high than getting well — are often seen as magnets for crime, a perception deepened by a few high-profile murders.

But a report from the Rand Corp. reaches a startling conclusion: The opposite appears to be true.

In a study of crime near Los Angeles dispensaries — which the investigators call the most rigorous independent examination of its kind — the Santa Monica-based think tank found that crime actually increased near hundreds of pot shops after they were required to close last summer.

“What I would take away from it is maybe there should just be a little bit less fear about having dispensaries,” said Mireille Jacobson, a health economist who was the lead researcher. “Hopefully, this injects a little bit of science into the discussion.”

Of course, this should be freakin’ obvious, and certainly not the “startling conclusion” of writer John Hoeffel, despite the limited data used by RAND.

Yes, there are those with an anti-pot agenda who have tried to, without any real evidence, paint pot dispensaries as crime magnets, but nothing supports that, including common sense.

• Dispensaries have significant security, including cameras, that actually add to the safety of their surrounding area.
• People who buy medical marijuana (even people who don’t really need it, are less likely to be violent or combative as those who buy alcohol.
• When there is no dispensary, marijuana sales are controlled by competing criminals on the street – more likely to result in crime.

Of course, it would be even better if you eliminated the tiered system of medical marijuana and simply had pot available for sale like cigarettes, shutting down almost all criminal connections.

Note: There was an earlier AP version of this story yesterday, which appeared to be quickly scrubbed from papers, and I was trying to track down the study to see if it really exists, but now it shows up on the RAND site. Here’s the full report from RAND.