Drug WarRant

More Black Men in Prison Today Than Enslaved in 1850

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, told an audience at the Pasadena Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, “More African-American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.” […]

Alexander discusses how convicted felons are subject to forms of discrimination reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. This includes being denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits, much like their parents or grandparents.

I fought for the end of Prohibition II, son.

Via Drug Policy Alliance:

Washington, D.C. – At a briefing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) will enlist actor Martin Sheen and others to respond to two new critical reports: the Drug Policy Alliance’s Drug Courts are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use (www.drugpolicy.org/drugcourts) and the Justice Policy Institute’s Addicted to Courts: How a Growing Dependence on Drug Courts Impacts People and Communities (http://www.justicepolicy.org/drugcourts).

The briefing also follows a recent exposé, by weekly public radio show This American Life, of a Georgia drug court that has tied up people in the criminal justice net for years – often for cases that elsewhere would have resulted in short probation terms. After forging two checks on her parents’ checking account when she was 17, one for $40 and one for $60, for example, Lindsey Dills ended up in the Glynn County drug court for five and a half years, including a total of 14 months behind bars – and then, when she was finally kicked out of drug court, she faced another five-year sentence for the original offense, including six months in state prison. Another Glynn County drug court participant, Kim Spead, was incarcerated (at a cost of $17,000) for failure to pay $1,500 in fees – even though she had successfully graduated the program nearly two years earlier.

“The drug court phenomenon is, in large part, a case of good intentions being mistaken for a good idea,” said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director in Southern California for the Drug Policy Alliance, who contributed to the report. “We’re concerned – and the data show – that many people who enter a drug court may actually wind up incarcerated for more time than if they had not entered drug court to begin with and that many people who end up in drug court do not have a drug problem but are being ordered to drug treatment anyway, filling up limited space that should go to people who actually need and want treatment.”

“Drug courts have helped some people, but they have also failed many others and focused resources on people who could be better diverted to less resource-intensive options, like probation, and/or received drug treatment outside the criminal justice system,” Dooley-Sammuli added.

I’m sure that there are some people who have been helped by drug courts, but I’m glad that they are undergoing scrutiny. For too long, there’s been this “drug courts are good” feel-good viewpoint that seems to have prevented critical analysis. Certainly drug courts are not good in all situations and they are certainly not the solution to the “drug problem.”

What I find amusing is that the National Association of Drug Court Professionals is bringing out Martin Sheen to talk about how drug courts saved his son Charlie Sheen’s life.

The idea of having a policy for the entire country based on what works for Charlie Sheen is freakin’ hilarious.

You may have noticed that there’s a new ad up on the site (at right), for the excellent DVD: 10 Rules for Dealing With Police from Flex Your Rights.

It’s both fun and extremely useful, and it should be shared with all your friends.

If you don’t have a copy yet, here’s a great opportunity. And now, anytime someone buys a copy through that ad, Drug WarRant gets a cut! An easy way to show your support while getting something very valuable for yourself.

That’s the subtitle of this excellent article in Psychology Today: Tylenol and the War on Drugs

The article starts off about the recent realization by the FDA that pharmaceutical policy was setting people up to die of liver disease if they overused Vicodin, because it is intentionally laced with acetaminophen.

It goes on to logically tie that to the intentional poisoning of alcohol during Prohibition 1.

This is clearly the domain of the sado-moralist. They’re always around making sure that people get harmed rather than high.

Join Together has been a useful online publication for news and information of interest, particularly for those in the prevention and treatment arenas.

Join Together’s point of view is pretty far from that of Drug WarRant, yet I’ve often found their drug policy news coverage useful, and have often found robust discussions in their comments.

This afternoon, I received this note:

Dear Reader,

I am very happy to announce that effective next Monday, April 4, Join Together will become part of The Partnership at Drugfree.org. You will continue to receive your Join Together news as usual, with a fresh look, and have immediate access to the extraordinary resources that The Partnership at Drugfree.org has created for parents and communities.

Stable, long-term funding for free services like Join Together is always hard to achieve. You and more than 50,000 other leaders in prevention, treatment and policy throughout the country have relied on our daily news to stay current with research, policy, and practice. We have worked hard to not let you down.

That is why I am so pleased that Steve Pasierb, the President of The Partnership at Drugfree.org, and his colleagues have exciting plans to expand and improve Join Together in the coming years, while retaining the independent voice and commitment to evidence over ideology that has been the foundation of our relationship with you. [emphasis added]

Why do I find that hard to believe? I’ll admit that JoinTogether’s recent connection to CASA didn’t turn then into Joe Califano, but becoming a subsidiary of a blatant propaganda organization like drugfree.org, and believing that you’ll retain editorial integrity, seems awfully naive.

Why do you think drugfree.org has the resources to take on this operation, while they were unable to get the resources on their own? The difference is precisely because The Partnership pushes ideology over evidence, and there are a lot of interests out there that are happy to fund that.

Current Join Together staff members will remain at the Boston University School of Public Health. They will work in a new collaboration with the team at The Partnership at Drugfree.org to ensure a smooth transition of our news service and website content and to develop new joint projects to expand and strengthen Join Together screening and education services.

We will publish in our current format through Thursday, March 31. To allow for testing of the new online systems, we will not publish a daily newsletter on Friday. On the following Monday, April 4, Join Together will relaunch with a new home at www.drugfree.org and a new email design.

Thank you for your ongoing support of Join Together.

Sincerely,

David Rosenbloom
Director
Join Together

R.I.P.

Over the weekend, the Mexican attorney general stated: “The controlled trafficking of weapons is not authorized under the Mexican national legislation. An operation that would contemplate this would not have been acceptable to the Mexican government, and it will never be under any circumstance.” The Mexican Attorney General also stated that it’s conducting its own investigation to identify “the crimes that could have been carried out on Mexican territory.” CBS

That’s right, the gun cartel they’re investigating is the ATF.

…agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms say over the course of a year and a half, superiors ordered them to allow thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico as part of a failed plan to gain intelligence and take down a major drug cartel.

I wonder if Mexico will try to extradite ATF superiors. That would be interesting… Right now, though, they’re actually waiting for the U.S. government’s own internal investigation.

A note to the ATF… You really called this operation “Fast and Furious“?

I hate to tell you this, but you’re no Vin Diesel and Paul Walker by a long shot.

Perhaps you should have called it “Blue Streak“… although that’s probably too generous as well. Even Martin Lawrence’s character succeeded despite the bumbling.

Regular readers of this site know my views on Caballes v. Illinois, the pathetically moronic decision authored by Justice Stevens in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now it doesn’t take much evidence for police to justify a search of a car. But it does take more than a hunch.

Caballes, however, says that even with only a hunch, police can have a dog sniff around a car and if Rover alerts, now the search is justified. Stevens’ reasoning was that the dog was merely sniffing what was already there, and that you have no expectation of privacy when transporting illegal drugs. This, of course, has no logical basis unless you assume that dogs are 100% accurate — something we know is far from true.

Now the Illinois Supreme Court has taken this lunacy one step further.

Court says drug sniff set-up is OK

It may be a little easier for police officers in Illinois to find drugs after the Illinois Supreme Court this week OK’d drug sniff “set-ups” in one of a handful of decisions.

So, here’s the deal. In this case, the police had no more than a hunch. They also had a dog, so with Caballes v. Illinois in place, they could have the dog sniff around the vehicle. But they went a step further.

They made the driver roll up all the windows, and with auxiliary power on, turn the fans up to high in the car. Then they had the dog sniff around the vehicle. The dog alerted based on the air being forced out of the vehicle.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled, in a mind-bogglingly stupid opinion written by Justice Lloyd Karmeier, that such a “set-up” was just fine.

It’s a tortured piece of prose, subject to the same lack of reason as Stevens’ work. Just as Stevens tried to claim that the dog sniff wasn’t a search and so (even though on the basis of the sniff alone a search was made) it wasn’t a Fourth Amendment concern, so too Justice Karmeier tries to claim that since the directive to roll up the windows and turn on the fans isn’t by itself a search, the defendant has no Fourth Amendment right.

Justice Charles Freeman wrote a scathing and intelligent dissent, taking the majority to task for its “inappropriate analytical framework,” pointing out that both “search” and “seizure” must be analyzed in the Fourth Amendment, and that while a driver can certainly be required to produce their license and insurance in a traffic stop, going so far as to require the driver to force out of the vehicle is no longer a traffic stop, but is a seizure for the purpose of fishing for a search. That’s a clear Fourth Amendment violation.

I’d like to believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually overrule this (although I have no reason to expect reason there either). Still, in the meantime, expect this set-up to be used a lot now in Illinois.

American Thinker: End the War on Drugs Now – a conservative viewpoint

By any objective measure, the War On Drugs is a disastrous failure. It’s time to end this madness now. […]

What are the results of the War on Drugs?

A million innocent Americans are sitting in prisons right now solely because they’ve been caught storing, buying or using drugs. A million people who haven’t harmed anyone else. Americans prisons are overcrowded as a result.

Taxpayers dollars and limited police resources are being squandered on arresting people who may have harmed themselves but haven’t harmed anyone else, rather than be used chasing truly dangerous criminals.

America’s Southern border is dangerous and de facto governed by drug cartels, which are also present in hundreds of American cities, even NYC, Chicago, Tacoma, and Anchorage.

Drug gangs have high annual incomes, and therefore can afford to buy lethal weapons, bribe officials, and build villas for their leaders. This income is not taxed.

Meanwhile, Americans who want to buy drugs for recreational (or even medical) purposes are forced to buy them from these gangs rather than pharmacies. These drug cartels […]

It’s time to end the War on Drugs. It’s not a conservative policy, its results are dismal, its costly, and it has made America’s drug problem worse, not better.

Many of the commenters there disagree.

Every Member of Seattle’s Legislative Delegation Goes on the Record in Favor of Legalizing Pot

Sweet democracy on a stick. As of yesterday evening, every member of Seattle legislative delegation to Olympia—all ten representatives and all five senators from the 34th, 36th, 37th, 43rd, and 46th Districts—had gone on the record to say that they support taxing, regulating, and legalizing marijuana. They join every elected official at City Hall (the mayor, the city attorney, and all nine members of the city council) and King County Executive Dow Constantine. […]

This seems significant, whether we’re the first city or not: It appears that the safest position politically these days—the most mainstream position a politician can take in Seattle—is to replace the War on Pot with a government takeover the entire industry. Quashing the politically toxic drug war is a winning platform. A decade ago, before Seattle voters had deprioritized enforcement of pot possession, most local lawmakers wouldn’t touch this issue with a ten-foot bong.

Germany plans to legalize medical marijuana

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Tuesday, Health Minister Philipp Roesler said the plan could be carried out by a simple change in the ministry’s policy, and that no change in German law was necessary.

He added that because many other European countries already allow medical cannabis, the process in Germany could go “quickly in comparison.”

Cannabinoids for Treatment of Chronic Non-Cancer Pain; a Systematic Review of Randomized Trials

Via Paul Armentano, who notes:

Both cannabis inhalation and the administration of cannabinoids are associated with “significant analgesic effects” in the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain, according to a systemic review of randomized controlled trials to be published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. [..]

“Overall the quality of trials was excellent,” authors wrote. “Fifteen of the eighteen trials that met inclusion criteria demonstrated a significant analgesic effect of cannabinoid as compared to placebo, several reported significant improvements in sleep. There were no serious adverse effects.”

Researchers noted that all four trials involving inhaled cannabis “found a positive effect with no serious adverse side effects.” They added: “Of special importance is the fact that two of the trials examining smoked cannabis demonstrated a significant analgesic effect in HIV neuropathy, a type of pain that has been notoriously resistant to other treatments normally used for neuropathic pain. In the trial examining cannabis based medicines in rheumatoid arthritis a significant reduction in disease activity was also noted, this is consistent with pre-clinical work demonstrating that cannabinoids are anti-inflammatory.”

Did you know? The first international symposium on drug-impaired driving will be held in Montreal, Canada, on July 17 and 18, 2011. Source

Joint statement against the death penalty at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

The death penalty for drug offences is a violation of international law. This is clear. Yet 32 jurisdictions retain this excessive and cruel punishment. The International Harm Reduction Association has identified hundreds of executions annually for drug-related offences but believes that as many as one thousand people may be executed for drug offences each year when states that keep their death penalty statistics a secret are counted.

The justification for this is usually deterrence. This is a faulty argument that has been presented many times over, and for a range of crimes.

While nobody should be executed for any offence, the vast majority of those known to be sentenced to die for drugs are not kingpins or major traffickers. They are carriers. Very often involvement in this aspect of the drug trade is driven by poverty, drug dependence and a lack of options. To kill these people is cruel in the extreme.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine has been on a PR campaign, peddling an old “white paper” of theirs, claiming that they know better than doctors regarding the treatment of patients for things like cancer and neuropathy. In actuality, they’re opposing medical marijuana because they see legalization as a threat to their profits. They’ve got another article at Opposing Views with this gem from our old friend and snake-oil salesman Andrea Barthwell:

“If physicians were treating patients with other untested substances, there would be a public outcry,” Dr. Barthwell said.

Marijuana untested? Wow. That’s certainly going to be a surprise to the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana. Gee, maybe they’re all like Bill Clinton and didn’t inhale.

What about the thousands of years of use? Just didn’t happen?

Or how about all the thousands of actual, you know, scientific tests that have been conducted on marijuana? How did they all manage to leave marijuana untested?

What about Sativex? You know, the liquid marijuana whole plant extract developed by GW Pharmaceuticals after years of testing for which you were a lobbyist.

Untested?

With the Commission on Narcotic Drugs continuing this week in Vienna, delegates are in meetings wrangling over slight word changes in amendments without ever addressing the abject failure of the entire operation.

But others are. And the UNODC is having a tougher time getting an uncritical audience.

UN drugs chief sticks to punitive policy despite major failings at The Independent

International efforts to tackle the “global threat” of illicit drugs must be “rejuvenated” in accordance with a 50-year-old convention despite a series of major failings, the head of the UN drugs and crime agency has told The Independent.

This week, Yury Fedotov acknowledged that global opium production increased by almost 80 per cent between 1998 and 2009, and the international market for drugs is now worth as much as $320bn (£199bn) a year – making it the world’s 30th-largest industry.

In the face of such daunting statistics, Mr Fedotov, the new executive-director for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said the Single Convention of 1961 – the first international treaty to lay the framework for global drug-control systems – is still the most appropriate mechanism for tackling what he described as the “global, hydra-headed threat” of drugs and crime. He called on member states to “re-dedicate” themselves to the convention to take a tougher line against drug traffickers and “the drug threat originating from Afghanistan”. […]

Peter Sarosi, drug policy expert for the human rights organisation the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, said: “The continuing focus on criminal justice and prohibition has already proved to be ineffective.” His group protested outside the UN building this week to raise awareness of the undesirable side-effects of drug prohibition.

When you’ve been doing something for 50 years and have nothing to show for it but failure, simply saying that we should rededicating our commitment to it just doesn’t work anymore.

In recent years, there has been a strong movement of NGOs at the CND, including some top international harm reduction movements and reformers. Not all are welcomed fully in the Commission’s discussions, but they create their own events in the area, and are starting to create some real traction. I was heartened by this report from Joep Oomen:

One thing that is becoming clear in this year’s CND is that what happens at the official meeting is becoming less and less relevant. It is above all the side events that are well attended, and where lively discussions are taking place. The CND meetings themselves are endless repetitions of the same mantras. It is the contribution of non-governmental organizations that brings fresh air in the way that drug policies are conceived. When I first came here in 1994 critical NGOs were seen as weirdos, without any exception. Today, it is most of all the governments that insist on maintaining prohibition that fall out of the main picture.

Harm reduction, legal reform etc. is becoming mainstream. Just the Single Convention cannot be touched upon yet. However, this situation can not last much longer.

I only had opportunities to speak to a few delegations. We discussed the situation of the Bolivian amendment to the Single Convention with the Bolivian delegation. It seems that the government of Evo Morales is ready to denounce the Single Convention and then re-subscribe it but with a reservation to the articles referring to traditional coca consumption, just as we described before.

We also spoke to the Uruguayan delegation, who confirmed that a law proposal is likely to be approved that will decriminalise home production of marijuana for own use.

And we spoke to the EMCDDA [European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction] on the subject of drugs and driving. They confirmed that measures to apply zero tolerance to THC doses in driving ability tests do not have any scientific basis, and mentioned scientific research showing that low cocaine doses actually improves the ability to drive. I hope to find the exact data of this research in the coming days.

Nice to see the marginalization of the UNODC mainline in action. The more the better. One of the biggest problems of the very existence of the UNODC is that it provides an additional excuse for countries to wage their punitive and violent drug war against their own people (“we have no choice – it’s demanded by international treaty, don’t you know”).