Drug WarRant

… on how not to handle drug policy.

A good article: Ottawa’s drug problem: The penalty doesn’t fit the crime by Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob.

…the answer to offending “does not lie in simply building more prisons and getting more police. If that were true, then the United States would be the safest place on Earth.” […]

Imprisonment is very costly and, if it’s being justified as a means to address drug problems or achieve public safety, the government needs to demonstrate that imprisonment is the most cost-effective way of achieving reduction in drug use, production and trafficking. It won’t be able to do this. Interestingly, it never tried. […]

By addressing sentencing for drug offences in an unprincipled and incoherent manner and by suggesting that its new set of drug sentences will help address Canada’s drug problem, the government is doomed to failure on two counts: It will not address Canada’s drug problems, and it will make sentences less coherent than they are at the moment.

It’s fascinating to see our disaster through outside eyes. Fortunately, there are some that can see what should be obvious to all.

That’s the Supreme Court of Colombia. Who knew that we’d have to look to other Supreme Courts for an understanding of fundamental rights.

Colombia Supreme Court decriminalizes drugs for personal use

Colombia’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that carrying small doses of drugs is not a punishable offense, torpedoing years of effort by the administration of former President Alvaro Uribe to criminalize the personal possession and consumption of drugs.

According to the court, penalizing the personal use of drugs violates the “free development of personality.”

The court found that Legislative Act No.2, 2009, which banned the personal use of drugs, “implies the nullification of fundamental rights, and it represses and sanctions with the severest punishments (imprisonment) the personal decision to abandon one’s personal health, a choice that corresponds to their own decision and does not infringe on the rights of other members of society.”

According to newspaper El Tiempo, the Supreme Court set the “personal amount” of drugs at 20 grams of marijuana and one gram of cocaine.

I was reading another article about Mexican President Calderón, and it looked like it was going to be more of the same…

Calderón Blames US Consumer for Drug Wars in Latin America (Honduras Weekly)

My first thought was that this was getting a little old. Blaming US consumers for the violence in Mexico is like blaming gravity for plane crashes. Technically true, but you’re better off looking at what your pilots are doing and whether your airplanes are designed right.

But then I read what he actually said and realized that the headline writer completely missed the bombshell.

President Calderón said, “If [the US] is determined and resigned to consume drugs, then it should look for market alternatives that would either deny the stratospheric profits to criminals or create alternative shipment routes to the border with Mexico… but this situation can no longer continue as it is.”

Read that carefully. Calderón says if the US is going to continue to consume drugs (ie, not repeal the law of gravity), then it should look for market alternatives…

Did Calderón just call for legalization? I think so. Market alternatives that deny exorbitant profits to the black market is pretty much the definition of legalization.

How is that not the headline of this story?

That quote is also buried in this story in the Latin American Herald Tribune.

Early in the story, they talk about Calderón’s criticism of the U.S. a different way…

The crime prompted President Felipe Calderon to escalate his rhetoric against violent drug cartels and also criticize the United States’ appetite for illegal narcotics and demand greater commitment from Washington in the battle against organized crime.

Then much further down comes the key quote, with a slightly different translation that makes the latter part about distribution routes clearer, while keeping that very specific “market alternatives” language.

If Americans “are determined and resigned to consume drugs, then look for market alternatives that cancel out the criminals’ astronomical profits or establish clear entry points for the drugs distinct from the border with Mexico, but this situation can no longer continue unchanged,” he said.

Yes, President Calderón, it’s time for the U.S. to look at market alternatives.

…

In related news…

Ex-Mexico President Suggests Truce With Drug Cartels

Just an Ordinary Day of Death in Mexico’s War on Drug Traffickers

…

Update: McClatchy reports on Calderón’s reactions to the casino fire as well, and includes the criticism of U.S. not doing enough, but leaves out the references to market alternatives. So far, I’ve not found a single U.S. media outlet (other than blogs) that has reported this fairly major item.

Following close on recent news that the U.S. is deploying CIA operatives and mercenaries contractors in Mexico to fight the drug war, and the State Department’s announcement that Plan Mexico will continue indefinitely, we now hear that the war has expanded to bringing Mexican commandos into the U.S. to stage attacks.

Yes, you heard that right.

The Obama administration has expanded its role in Mexico’s fight against organized crime by allowing the Mexican police to stage cross-border drug raids from inside the United States, according to senior administration and military officials.

Mexican commandos have discreetly traveled to the United States, assembled at designated areas and dispatched helicopter missions back across the border aimed at suspected drug traffickers. The Drug Enforcement Administration provides logistical support on the American side of the border, officials said, arranging staging areas and sharing intelligence that helps guide Mexico’s decisions about targets and tactics.

Really? We’re allowing commandos from another country to launch attacks from inside our borders?

…

In other news showing the successes of our drug war…

Mexico casino attack leaves 53 dead

MONTERREY, Mexico – The death toll climbed as workers continued to pull bodies out of a burned casino in northern Mexico, where gunmen spread gasoline and ignited a fire that trapped and killed at least 53 gamblers and employees.

Well, it looks like the memory problems are solved for now by upping server capacity. A huge thanks to those who have helped out through the donation button on the left. I’m still looking at future options.

DEA rejects UMass Professor Lyle Craker’s bid to grow marijuana for federally-regulated medical research

No surprise here, as Michele Leonhart had already decided on this just before Obama took office. But now the objections have been officially denied by the DEA.

One more bit of evidence (that we didn’t even need) that the government isn’t interested in the facts. And they certainly won’t give us our laboratory.

U.S. Approach to War on Drugs Ignores Dr. King’s Lessons on Justice, Compassion by Robert Rooks, the National Criminal Justice Director for the NAACP.

Some will conclude that America has achieved equality because of President Obama, but I would argue the war on drugs shows we have a long way to go. After forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore Dr. King’s lessons on justice, compassion and love.

My favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with America’s criminal justice system. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

America’s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate.

NIDA has a National Drug Facts Week (this year it’s October 31-November 6), where they supposedly “encourage teens to get factual answers from scientific experts about drugs and drug abuse.” Except they don’t, really. They lead teens through highly selective propaganda to learn only those facts that fit the goals of NIDA. Their site is here.

The problem is, of course, that selective and biased facts are as bad as no facts.

Well, now there is an alternative.

The new and improved National Drug Facts Week at DrugFactsWeek.com – for the real facts.

Let me know if there’s anything you think I should add to the Drug Facts Week page. I expect to expand it as time permits.

And feel free to link to it. Let’s get the Google rankings up for this page – maybe we can top NIDA’s.

(The key is to use the words “Drug Facts Week” or “National Drug Facts Week” as the link text, or next to the url if tweeted.)

Well, not really. But as Maia Szalavitz makes clear in her latest Time Magazine piece, he might as well have done so.

Califano, and his shocktoids have been a regular topic of derision here at Drug WarRant.

The latest shows correlation between teens who use social networking sites and the use of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana.

In a statement accompanying the release of the report, CASA founder Joe Califano writes, “The results are profoundly troubling. This year’s survey reveals how the anything goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression, suggestive television programming and what-the-hell attitudes put teens at sharply increased risk of substance abuse.”

However, as with much of the center’s previous work, the research methods used here cannot actually determine whether social media causes increased substance use or whether the association is simply related to a third factor, such as teens’ concern about their social status or conversely, having strict parents.

Maia properly ridicules his baseless alarmism.

A recent study, for example, finds an inverse correlation between a penile length and a country’s gross domestic product — nations that averaged smaller penis sizes had faster economic growth than countries with larger penises between 1960 and 1985 — but no one seriously believes that penis reduction will solve our economic problems.

Likewise, even if it were possible to stop teens from using social networks — or for adults to truly monitor teen Facebook use — the odds that this would reduce drug use are low.

Scary viewpoint from a school official:

GYPSUM, Colorado — Schools are on the front lines of the war on drugs and that makes it worth fighting, says an Eagle Valley High School administrator.

“Is it a war worth fighting? “I say yes. Absolutely yes,” said Eric Mandeville, assistant principal at Eagle Valley High School.

Sorry that Drug WarRant has been down for the past day. It’s been a very frustrating 30 hours, and I still don’t have an explanation for why it’s been down.

According to support staff at DreamHost, the Private Server which I pay for has been getting massive memory spikes every two minutes or so which have been forcing the server to stop all processes (thereby essentially shutting down the site).

What they don’t seem to be able to do is tell my why. (They simply suggest that I do some optimization stuff with the site that I’ve already done before).

I finally increased the memory capability of the site massively (which will make me broke very soon if I keep it there), to get it up right now.

We’ll see what happens.

Conor Friedersdorf has an illuminating OpEd on the difference between press coverage of “protest candidates” like John Huntsman and coverage of Ron Paul/Gary Johnson.

Huntsman is challenging orthodoxies of thought that afflict the GOP alone, and taking positions that reflect the conventional wisdom in the media […] In contrast, Johnson and Paul are challenging orthodoxies of thought that are bi-partisan in nature and implicate much of the political and media establishment. […]

For questioning America’s aggressive, interventionist foreign policy and its failed War on Drugs, policies that are tremendously costly, consequential, and executed in ways that are immoral and demonstrably damaging to our civil liberties, Paul and Johnson aren’t given points for speaking uncomfortable truths, shining light on evasions, or affecting the political conversation for the better. […]

But a protest candidate that challenges the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, the war on drugs, or civil liberties is ignored, no matter the substantive quality of their arguments on those issues. And if their fans complain, it is pointed out that they don’t have a chance of winning. The salutary effect that protest candidates can have on political discourse even if they don’t win is completely forgotten.

I think he’s nailed it pretty well.