Drug WarRant

There’s an important new book out by Damon Barrett called “Children of the Drug War,” available at Amazon, but also available to read for free online (it’s that important).

This collection of original essays looks at the impact of the war on drugs on children, young people and their families.

I knew right away in the introduction that the book was taking us in the right direction.

To begin with there is a basic need to take stock—to count the costs. This necessitates a closer look at what really matters in terms of outcomes. Indeed, it is the way in which “success” has been measured in drug control that has led to some of the strongest criticism. The number of people who use drugs, the amount of kilos of drugs seized, prosecutions secured, and hectares of illicit crops eradicated are some of the key indicators in this regard. But while these indicators can be useful, they are, for the most part, indicators of means, not ends. This is not often recognized, and in the prominence given to such measurements, drug control has, over time, become self-referential and self-perpetuating; a positive feedback loop in which the fight against drugs is an end in itself.

Counting the costs to children is about breaking that loop as the process of investigating the harms of the war on drugs can help to delineate between means and ends and provide an insight into the question of meaningful outcomes. Children’s and families’ involvement in drug production and trade, for example, is a mix of coercive forces, often driven or even necessitated by poverty and social neglect. These drivers are all but ignored and even exacerbated by current drug policies that focus on eradication and interdiction, as some of the chapters in this book show.

I haven’t read the whole thing yet – just got the link to it today and wanted to share it with you as soon as possible. Here’s Javier, from Colombia:

The planes often sprayed our community. People would get very sad when they saw the fumigation planes. You see the planes coming—four or five of them—from far away with a black cloud of spray behind them. They say they are trying to kill the coca, but they kill everything. I wish the people flying those fumigation planes would realize all the damage they do. I wish they’d at least look at where they’re going to spray, rather than just spraying anywhere and everywhere. The fumigation planes sprayed our coca and food crops. All of our crops died. Sometimes even farm animals died as well. After the fumigation, we’d go days without eating. Once the fumigation spray hit my little brother and me. We were outside and didn’t make it into the house before the planes flew by. I got sick and had to be taken to the hospital. I got a terrible rash that itched a lot and burned in the sun. The doctor told us the chemical spray was toxic and was very dangerous. I was sick for a long time and my brother was sick even longer.

We were fumigated five times. I don’t think they will ever stop fumigating. They’ll keep fumigating because there’s still coca. They say they won’t stop fumigating until all the coca is dead. […]

I know if I go back there, I’ll see lots of people get killed. I saw two people killed right in front of me; Rebecca and her brother. They lived close by us. The guerrillas had been looking for Rebecca and caught her while she was with her brother. I was standing close by and saw the whole thing. They made them get down on their knees. They shot them many times in the head with machine guns, picked up their dead bodies, put them in chairs, put bags over their heads, and left.

Children of the Drug War. Counting the Costs.

…

Reading this brought to mind the struggle I had with the latest addition to my CafePress store. As I was designing this car magnet, the phrase just popped into my head, and seemed right.

I just got a note from my Mom, who is 89. She reads Drug WarRant every now and then to keep up with what I’m doing. She said:

Did you create this: “The Drug War Doesn’t Care About the Life of your Child. Legalize and Regulate for Safety.”? That’s an excellent message which will require some thought…

Couldn’t ask for a better recommendation.

Children of the Drug War. Counting the Costs.

Here are the key statistics from the latest Angus Reid Public Opinion Poll.

• 55% support the legalization of marijuana, with greatest support from:
• Democrats: 63%
• Independents: 61%
• Men: 57%
• Aged 35-54: 57%
• 67% think the “War on Drugs” has been a failure… however
• Only 10% support legalizing ecstasy
• 9% powder cocaine
• 8% heroin
• 7% meth
• 7% crack cocaine
• 64% think America has a serious drug abuse problem that affects the whole country

There are some important points we can gather from this:

1. Democrats (the voters) support marijuana legalization, even though Democrats (the politicians) do not. The challenge here is to get it to rise to more than support, but a crucial voting issue.
2. We’ve done a great job of demonstrating the failures of the drug war to the citizens, but we still have a long way to go to convince them that legalization of all drugs isn’t surrender, but a solution.
3. If close to 2/3 of Americans think that we have a serious drug abuse problem, then we, as reformers, need to do a better job of showing how reform can address that problem.

Drug Czar ‘Too Busy” to Meet With Fellow Cops – by Norm Stamper

Norm sends a letter to Gil Kerlikowske:

Subject: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide

We didn’t just drop by on June 14, Gil. We had sent emails and made phone calls asking for a meeting. Our requests went unanswered. So we decided to show up in person, and hope for an audience.

Instead, you sent your aide downstairs to head us off in the lobby. The man graciously accepted the report, promised to deliver it to you, and to convey our request that you get back to us with your reactions.

Just curious, have you read it? […]

But we weren’t there to ask for money, Gil. And we do understand that you haven’t the authority to change laws.

Our expectation was that you’d at least be willing to have a grownup conversation about our drug laws. […]

We’ve come by our anti-drug war views honestly, through scholarship, research and real-world experience. Our point of view is increasingly in alignment with that of citizen-taxpayers across the country.

We’re not going away, Gil. Talk to us.

Day Laborers Tricked Into Harvesting Pot; Get Prison Time at Toke of the Town

Federal prosecutors are wrapping up a weak case against 11 men charged with cultivating thousands of marijuana plants in Ohio. The state’s former top cop claimed it’s an example of cartel-sponsored drug production, but defense attorneys point out that many of the defendants were day laborers who were tricked into harvesting the illegal crop. […]

For instance, Leonel Mondragon-Garcia got a call on his cellphone offering “a day’s work” with no details, according to his attorney, Margaret Quinn. He was driven to a rural wooded area north of the Muskingum River and learned he was expected to help harvest a field of marijuana.

Just about the time he figured out he was trapped of the day, police raided the grow camp, arresting Mondragon-Garcia and 10 others, according to Quinn.

The 29-year-old spent several months in jail before pleading guilty to conspiracy to “knowingly and intentionally manufacture” more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He was given 12 months and one day in prison, after which he’ll be deported to Mexico.

Must make the DEA and the federal prosecutors feel good knowing they’re able to stick it to someone like that.

War and Memory by John Sinclair

A nice, but sad piece, about concert venues, the drug war, and asset forfeiture abuse.

Sometimes, while looking through newsreader headlines for articles that might be of interest, you find some rather unusual things, like this one:

Drug Charge: Woman In Nude Ear Squat Case Goes Free

I read the article. I still have no idea.

Poor federal government with its limited resources to communicate policy. They’re absolutely powerless when confronted by the daunting media machine of marijuana legalizers.

That appears to be the point of Keith Humphreys’ bizarre government-as-victim post about the DOJ’s medical marijuana policies.

Could it be that the administration has been hypocritical about marijuana policy, intentionally vague about enforcement, completely anti-science, and trying to have it both ways (appearing to be pro-science progressives while really being anti-science shills of the pharmaceutical and law enforcement lobbies)?

Naw. Must be the fault of the legalizers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBOXUjHhrVM&feature=player_profilepage

…

Also, see Gary Johnson’s OpEd in The Washington Times: JOHNSON: Hitting the cartels where it hurts

Imagine you are a drug lord in Mexico, making unfathomable profits sending your illegal product to the United States. What is the headline you fear the most? “U.S. to build bigger fence”? “U.S. to send troops to the border”? “U.S. to deploy tanks in El Paso”? No. None of those would give you much pause. They would simply raise the level of difficulty and perhaps cause you to escalate the violence that already has turned the border region into a war zone. But would they stop you or ultimately hurt your bottom line? Probably not.

But what if that drug lord opened his newspaper and read this: “U.S. to legalize and regulate marijuana”? That would ruin his day, and ruin it in a way that could not be fixed with more and bigger guns, higher prices or more murder.

You may disagree with his political approach of talking about ending the whole drug war but focusing only on marijuana policy, but you can’t deny that he’s doing an outstanding job of focusing on the anti-drug-war message in his campaign.

Update: You know how practically every mainstream article about marijuana or drug policy has that ubiquitous and anachronistic graphic of the fingers holding a large lit doobie?

Well, I was fascinated by the graphic that was used instead in the Washington Times OpEd. Much more interesting and relevant.

It’s “Legalization” by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times.

It appears to be a graphic showing that under criminalization, there is an inevitable link between marijuana and huge black-market profits, which then leads to blood and violence. And the scissors and dotted line indicates legalization severing that connection.

An outstanding editorial from the Chicago Tribune puts some much-needed sanity in the government-fueled hysteria over “drugged driving.”

Someone who drinks to excess and gets behind the wheel of a car can be prosecuted and punished for driving under the influence. Everyone would agree that’s as it should be. But what if the law included DUI to cover anyone driving sober who has had a drink in the last week?

That would make little sense, since the past drinking would have no effect on the motorist’s fitness to drive. But under Illinois law, something very similar is the norm for drivers who have used illegal drugs. […]

But it’s still possible to detect impairment through field sobriety. Potheads may reek of weed. A driver caught on videotape mumbling incoherently would have a hard time arguing the dope in his urine had no effect. In these cases, an officer can request a blood or urine sample — with refusal leading to license suspension.

When felony charges are involved, the law ought to require a showing that the drug in question contributed to the crash. Motorists involved in fatal accidents who have drugs in their bodies should at least have the chance to rebut the presumption that they were impaired.

Driving under the influence is a crime that deserves strict enforcement and stern punishment. Driving long after being under the influence is not the same thing, and it shouldn’t be treated as though it were.

Let’s hope that we see more of this kind of sanity. It’s time for the drug czar’s ugly and fact-free push for per se drugged driving laws to get ridiculed and to stop getting a free pass from the press.

We’ve talked here often about the corruption that is an integral part of the drug war. There are a lot of corrupting influences, but one of the most egregious is the notion that law enforcement can go out and seize money for itself like some kind of mercenary army that is paid by allowing it to loot and pillage the enemies it defeats (or anyone else who gets in the way).

Americans for Forfeiture Reform has one more in the long list of abuses…

A Kentucky sheriff is on trial over how he used more than $43,000 from a drug-asset forfeiture account belonging to the county. […]

Hendrickson cited Garrett’s use of more than $900 to pay his homeowner’s insurance and nearly $600 to pay for Coca-Cola products. Thousands more, she said, were used to pay personal loans for former Deputy Sheriff Benjamin Buckler Sr., who became a Carlisle police officer before he was indicted earlier this year on similar charges. Buckler will be tried separately.

About $6,000 was spent to make drug buys as part of investigations, but there was documentation only for a $180 buy, Hendrickson said. There were no case reports and no prosecutions resulting from those buys, she said.

And this is just peanuts in the millions of dollars in forfeiture abuses – one that got caught.

Narco News has a statement from Javier Sicilia and the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

They’ve been working to stop the drug war (in particular, the use of military against citizens) in Mexico and have tried to work with Calderón and Congress, but are furious since it appears the government has paid lip service to their concerns, while drafting additional legislation to allow even more war powers within the country.

After the agreements we made with the Mexican Congress on July 28 in Chapultepec Castle, we have come, as agreed, to the home of the legislators who claim to represent us in order to renew the word that they gave. Unfortunately, on August 3rd, Wednesday morning, we were surprised to learn that the deputies approved a draft version of the National Security Law that had previously been sent to the Senate, against our demand to stop the law, against our warning to them that they not tell us one thing in public and do the opposite behind the closed doors of a bureaucracy and amid the dark goings-on of power, against the weight of the Word. […]

When the deputies approved the Senate’s draft of the law on August 2, Tuesday evening, what they really did was continue the process of unconstitutional legalization of the current administration’s war strategy, and to therefore, continue the war. And when they asked for forgiveness, under the sacred Word, they didn’t know what they were saying; it was only out of a unconscious disdain for not just our 50,000 dead, our more than 10,000 disappeared and our more than 120,000 displaced, but it was also out of a disdain for the love that Octavio Paz refers to. It is a disdain for flesh and bone human beings who are living in the nation today, and who tomorrow, under the auspices of the law, will swell the graves of the dead and the criminals’ reserve army. […]

Why did the deputies, only a few hours after they began the work of having a dialogue with our movement, while National Autonomous University of Mexico specialists and human rights defenders were preparing a project that would actually work in favor of peace and public security, hurry in approving a law legalizing a war that is imposed by the United States and is a source of so many tears and so much pain?

We reiterate that we’ve not only had it up to here with the war, but also with the deception and the simulation that make it possible and accompany it.[…]

We are going to mobilize and call on you, brothers and sisters of our nation, to mobilize with us on Sunday, August 14 and beyond so we can together raise the national flag, the “white flag” against the war, to again insist on what State powers and the criminals do not understand: that we do not want one more death, not one more person disappeared, not one more person tortured, that we want a Mexico where each place is suitable, where each hour is favorable, for us to look each other in the eye and love one another.

Mobilization next Sunday.

It’s so important for the people to step up and not let their government continue its thirst for war. And we have to do more to stop the United States’ desire to impose war on everyone else.

We urge the executive and legislative branches to return to the dialogue by showing an authentic willingness to listen to the citizens so that together we can bring peace. We remind them of the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”

Documents: Feds allegedly allowed Sinaloa cartel to move cocaine into U.S. for information

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.

The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.

The case could prove to be a bombshell on par with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “Operation Fast and Furious,” except that instead of U.S. guns being allowed to walk across the border, the Sinaloa cartel was allowed to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009.

This is big. Not surprising. But big.

Of course, to the feds, letting several tons of cocaine into the U.S. is nothing. They know (as do we) that it’ll have almost no effect on supply, and if it’ll give them some big busts for the press, they’ll take that deal any day.

However, that reality doesn’t match the “getting drugs off the streets” message that the federal government dishes out to the media and the populace on a daily basis.

It also makes the theatre of their regular seizure photo-ops (not to mention the entire basis of the drug war) seem… disingenuous.

Oops.