Drug WarRant

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Some state lawmakers are hoping all the fuss over the White case will focus public attention on the growing problem of drugged driving, a crime that’s difficult to detect and hard to prosecute.

Although Kathleen White was suspected of drugged driving after her one-car accident on July 6, a hospital drug test cleared her of being under the influence of any opiate drugs, and a neurologist diagnosed a seizure.

Let me get this straight… the idea is to use the case of someone who was falsely accused of being high on drugs to promote tougher laws on drugged driving?

Stupid Quote of the Day:

Dick Little in the Paradise Post must have thought Reefer Madness was a documentary.

How many will smoke pot and deteriorate into mindless morons who will have to be cared for in public hospitals and institutions for the rest of their lives, at a cost of millions of dollars to the rest of us? So much for all the tax revenue they claim will be generated. It will go towards the medical costs of taking care of those who will have health issues from overuse of the drug.

So, just where is that hospital where they keep all the brain-dead potheads on life support? I can’t seem to find the address.

Mindless morons, on the other hand, appear to be writing for the Paradise Post.

Smart Quote of the Day:

Ken at Popehat talks about Cayley Anthony’s useful idiots — you know, the ones who, due to their ignorant outrage and lack of understanding of how the criminal justice system is supposed to work, “become the useful idiots of the security state and the unwitting shills of the media.”

Imagine, for a moment, if all of that outrage could he harnessed and directed not against the acquittal of one accused defendant, but against the ruinous war on drugs or police misconduct or any number of other causes that don’t amount to being government’s fluffer.

Now that would be something.

John H. Tucker has an excellent feature in the Riverfront Times: Angela Halliday was a junkie. Does that make her a murderer?

It’s a powerful in-depth article about a couple who shared everything – their lives, their love, their possessions, and their addiction.

One of them died of an overdose, and now the other one is being charged with his murder.

It’s about prosecutor over-reach and laws intended to be a deterrent that actually make us less safe.

I was also interviewed for the article and am quoted on page 5.

There are a lot of lessons in the article, and they all add up to the fact that our drug war is poisoning everything it touches.

Some people think that heroin is the poison. But no. Heroin is mostly just a conduit for the poison of prohibition.

The International Business Times is really a joke of an online publication, and has published some really bad pro-drug-warrior stuff in the past. Here’s another one, this by Amrutha Gayathri: Why DEA is Against Legalizing Smoked Marijuana

It’s mostly a list of DEA and ONDCP talking points, but then it actually goes to Irma Perez!

DEA reports a graphic story that occurred in California in the spring of 2004 which proves that legalization of marijuana is a much more complex issue than what the public perceives.

14-year-old Irma Perez was “in the throes of her first experience” with the drug Ecstasy. After taking one Ecstasy tablet, she became ill and told friends that she felt like she was ‘going to die’. Her teenage friends, instead of seeking medical care tried to get Perez to smoke marijuana. When that failed due to her seizures, the friends tried to force-feed marijuana leaves to her, “apparently because [they] knew that drug is sometimes used to treat cancer patients.” Irma Perez lost consciousness and died a few days later when she was taken off life support.

I can’t believe that they’re actually still using that story as an argument against medical marijuana.

Irma was so clearly a drug war victim and not a medical marijuana victim, as this article back in 2004 shows.

What perhaps would have saved Irma’s life is a good Good Samaritan law.

DPA’s Gabriel Sayegh at Syracuse.com talks about New York’s new 911 Good Samaritan law: Sunday’s commentary: New York’ 911 Good Samaritan law to limit overdose deaths a national model.

In my view, it doesn’t go far enough, but it’s a very good first step.

“No one should go to jail for trying to save a life,” said Hiawatha Collins, a leader and board member of VOCAL-NY, one of the many groups that worked with the Drug Policy Alliance in advocating for the reforms. “This law will help make sure that calling 911 is the first thing someone does if they witness an overdose — not worry about what the cops will do. New York is making clear that saving lives needs to be our priority, not locking people up.”

Government agencies try to keep massive marijuana eradication effort secret.

A New Way to Fight Mexico’s Vicious Cartels: Legalizing Marijuana – Time Magazine.

New? I think not.

However, still a good article.

However, policy reformists point out that whatever the exact numbers, everyone agrees that Mexican gangsters are making billions of dollars selling marijuana to American smokers. “There is no doubt that marijuana legalization would hurt Mexican gangsters in their pocketbooks,” says Tom Angell, spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a U.S. group that opposes the war on drugs.[…]

Policy reformists like Angell, however, argue that a yes vote in a marijuana referendum would be a first step toward a historic change in drug policy. If marijuana were sold legally in shops north of the Rio Grande, Mexican authorities would be much less eager to spark more bonfires of captured weed. “Politicians across the U.S. and in Latin America would become emboldened to change their own marijuana laws,” Angell said. “It is a vote that will be heard across the world.”

Check this out. Thinking Drugs – a new site where people can go and rate the arguments on drug policy to see where they stand on the issues. Nicely done. Doesn’t attempt to tell you what to think, but makes you think about the positions you hold, which I think could help people who are unclear about their position (as opposed to most of us).

No surprise: The survey pegged me as a “Drug Policy Reformer” on the “legaliser” and “harm reducer” ends of the scales.

This is an open thread.

I consumed some of it today. Right out in public where I could be seen. Savored it slowly and obviously. There was even a police officer there for some other reason… saw me… and turned away, completely uninterested.

It’s everywhere – parties, restaurants, stores… A 10-year-old could walk into a store today and purchase a pint (with nobody stopping him), walk out of the store and consume it… and die.
Continue reading →

John Payne, at Americans for Forfeiture Reform, has an interesting piece titled Bizarro Robin Hood

We’ve talked here at length about the corrupting influence of asset forfeiture, and it is my belief that it is inherently wrong for any agency (especially law enforcement) to profit from the decisions that it makes. At best it creates the appearance of conflict of interest; at the worst it leads to widespread corruption (and even loss of innocent life). To the extent that any forfeited funds or assets go to any aspect of the criminal justice system that is involved in determining priorities or actually seizing assets, that needs to be changed.

Of course, we’ve heard of all the new toys purchased by police departments with forfeiture funds, and also about the widespread lack of accounting and accountability for those funds. But there are other problems that occur. The Bizarro Robin Hood story covers Sheriff Bob Hinshaw, from Sedgwick County, Kansas, who gave $10,000 to the local Boys and Girls Club.

The Boys and Girls Club is a worthy cause, but political officials should not have slush funds that they can use to buy goodwill in the community. In fact, this is a major reason why the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and requires all appropriations bills to originate in the House of Representatives. Allowing executive agencies to control their own revenues invites corruption and endangers our republican system of government.

Exactly.

We’ve followed Peter Hitchens’ anti-marijuana screeds in the past. This one, for example was a real classic.

Well, apparently the discussion has been continuing and now Peter answers his critics in Resting My Case. It’s a doozy.

I believe myself to be descended from some of the Puritans who were Cromwell’s Ironsides, and I’m proud of that. When I listen to the excuses made for the culture of self-stupefaction, I can feel the scorn of those sober old Psalm-singers in my blood, and I’m with them. They looked the world full in the face, fought against what they thought was wrong, and also knew what they fought for and loved what they knew.

This country would not be what it is, if it fell into the hands of people who lay down, shrugged and giggled, rather than people who rose up and fought. I cannot make people care about this who don’t, especially those who have already altered their brains by taking such drugs. But I hope there are enough of the old sort to see that changing your perception rather than reforming reality is the road to slavery.

How sad that the only thing about modern Britain that makes the cannabis lobby angry is the continued existence a few individuals like me, who wish to deny them their dope.

And yes, he has a plan to “deny them their dope.”

Most cannabis users don’t find it such a marvellous experience that they’d be prepared to risk six months at hard labour for a second offence of possession (my suggested minimum penalty, the first offence being dealt with by a genuine ‘caution’, whose condition would be that the cautioned person never subsequently committed the same offence). Permitting premises to be used for its use would also be treated in the same way. This ( as with the smoking ban) has the effect of turning every householder or owner of commercial premises into an ally of the law.

After a brief flurry of convictions and imprisonment, during which the actual unyielding severity of the new law would be demonstrated, use would fall with amazing rapidity. My opponents know this. They know they would be too scared to carry on possessing under those circumstances. That is why they get so cross with me. Because my plan would work, and deprive them of their pleasure.

I have no doubt that, among dope-smokers as in the rest of society, there would be quite enough informers willing to earn money or favours from the police to ensure that all users had a lively fear of being caught and prosecuted.

Of course, in addition to being dead wrong about pretty much everything he says, he has no power. He’s become anachronistic, somewhat amusing, and, really, sad.

Some good comments in response, including this one from “Responsible Choice,” although there are also some Peter Hitchens supporters, of course.

Although I am essentially pro-cannabis, specifically in terms of harm minimisation when compared to alcohol, I would NEVER, EVER think for a second that I have the right to deny or dictate what another human should or should not put in their bodies. As far as I’m concerned it is a fundamental human right. This is not to say that I am blind to the fact that many things people put into their bodies have repercussions for them individually and those around them, rather I see this area as being one that belongs strictly within the jurisdiction of health professionals.

Even suggesting that six months hard labour is an appropriate consequence, completely punitive at that, highlights the fact that your concern lies solely in proving that what you think is right is in fact right, and that in your mind a belligerent and aggressive law enforcement approach can forcibly stamp out what you consider to be wrong. Fortunately what others choose to do with their own bodies has absolutely nothing to do with what you think they should be doing, or not doing in this case. However it still remains concerning that your professed method of dealing with people who use a substance that has been classified illicit, whilst a legal equivalent reaps a death toll of around 5% of the world’s population each year, is extreme incarceration. It reveals a distinct lack of empathy, compassion and understanding of the nature of substance use throughout history, and in the present day.

Your views, whilst you are free to express and hold them, as they rightly should be, are cruel, simplistic and violent in my view. Prohibition has failed miserably, your novel spin on an archaic, although admittedly puritanical law, is nothing but that, a rehash of views from the past, that have been thoroughly proven to be flawed, and extremely damaging to all societies of the world. Do I think my fellow man should be punished for seeking release and/or pleasure from substance use? NO, I don’t. Do I believe people should toughen up and follow a stricter doctrine of pure living based on historical religious ideals? Who cares if I do, it’s beside the point, and has little bearing on the way people will freely choose to live their lives, and it should not be any other way.

The comparison of cannabis with Thalidomide was the only memorable part of your whole article, and only because of the extreme ignorance it portrays. That is the only thing I will take away of any value from what you have stated above, in the sense that it grants me a glimpse inside of the world of a closed minded and misinformed individual. My thanks for that.

Good comment.

It’s baffling to read someone like Peter Hitchens. He’s an anomaly – a true believer who is fully convinced his opponents have been addled in the head, thereby allowing him to dismiss criticisms quite easily.

He’s convinced (likely through a “moral” argument) that all marijuana users are automatically damaged (as opposed to casual alcohol users), that their damage ends up making them less productive to society, so that society is therefore damaged as well by marijuana use, and that he is bound to attempt to protect civilization from that damage.

It doesn’t matter that his premises, conclusions and moral judgements are completely wrong. He’ll adjust his absorption of information to fit his worldview.

(Note: remember that Peter Hitchens and Christopher Hitchens are brothers, but have distinctly different views.)

Drunk Cop Crashes Truck Pulling DARE Trailer

NAACP Joins Coalition to End the War on Drugs – E.D. Kain at Forbes does a nice job on the NAACP story.

Really bad advice to parents from police on drugs

Use the Law. The legal system can provide external accountability and motivation. It supersedes (or often supports) a parent’s rules. A slightly blemished legal record is a trivial threat to your child’s future. A legacy of addiction, on the other hand, is a sure-fire failure. […]

In all cases, law enforcement should be viewed as a resource. From intelligence and guidance, to sanction and recovery. Their role is a critical one and may provide your best hope of thoroughly addressing this daunting challenge.

(Yes, I’m aware my headline of this item needs punctuation or re-wording, but I kind of like it this way.)

Kids from grow-op homes healthy, drug-free: study

When it comes to children being raised in homes where their parents produced drugs, medically speaking, in most cases the kids are all right, suggests a Canadian study. […]

Additionally, the study said there were fewer health problems among the children examined than those in the general Canadian population.

“We clearly found ourselves that the kids are doing well,” study author Dr. Gideon Koren told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. “Which brings the question, is it healthy to separate them from parents?”

Bolivia’s President Says He Fears U.S. Plot

Bolivian leader Evo Morales says he’s worried that U.S. authorities will plant something on his presidential plane to link him with drug trafficking when he attends Wednesday’s United Nations General Assembly meeting.

Somewhere, a DEA department head is saying “Damn! All right, scrub operation Flying High.”

Obama Says Drug Users Must Be Treated as Criminals – Scott Morgan’s latest piece at Huffington Post.

Jury nullification is a topic that’s of strong interest to those of us in the drug policy reform movement. A jury of peers is supposed to be the ultimate check on government and has the power to judge both the facts and the law, not be a rubber stamp for the prosecutor. Judges and prosecutors may not like that, but they can’t prevent jury nullification… except by attempting to keep jurors in the dark about their rights and responsibilities.

That’s what Judge Belvin Perry tried to do when he sentenced Mark Schmidter to 292 days and $500 for being guilty of “indirect criminal contempt” for passing out jury nullification flyers outside the courthouse.

I had to look up “indirect criminal contempt” because it’s such a Kafkaesque-sounding charge. Sure enough, it exists, although in proper legal framework, indirect criminal contempt defendants are treated as other criminal defendants and allowed jury trial, etc. Florida, for some strange reason, doesn’t allow that by bizarrely defining criminal contempt as not actually being a crime, and gives all the power to the judge.

So here we have a judge who decided he didn’t like Mark Schmidter’s speech, banned it, complained about it, had him arrested, tried him, convicted him, and sentenced him all on his own. That’s not the justice system in which I believe, nor are the judge’s actions allowed by the Constitution I uphold.

So no, I guess I don’t have indirect criminal contempt for Judge Perry. My contempt is a lot more direct.