Drug WarRant

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”).

At Stop The Drug War:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) Tuesday issued an executive order Tuesday requiring that current state employees submit to random drug tests and that applicants for state jobs undergo pre-hiring drug tests. The order will go into effect in 60 days for current employees and immediately for new hires, but it certain to be challenged in court.

Drug testing, when conducted by the government, is a fourth amendment issue. It is search and seizure of the most private kind, and is thus subject to the “reasonableness” test. And while the Supreme Court has allowed drug testing as reasonable for people in safety-critical jobs and students in extra-curricular activities (!), it still has never allowed a blanket random test of all government employees. (Private sector companies can require that all employees be drug tested because they’re not the government for the purpose of the fourth amendment.)

The ACLU of Florida attacked Scott’s order, saying that a federal court had in 2004 already ruled that the state was violating the Fourth Amendment when the Department of Juvenile Justice instituted a random drug testing program. In that case, a US district judge ordered the agency to halt random drug testing and pay the worker who sued $150,000.

“I’m not sure why Gov. Scott does not know that the policy he recreated by executive order today has already been declared unconstitutional,” ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon said in a statement. “The state of Florida cannot force people to surrender their constitutional rights in order to work for the state. Absent any evidence of illegal drug use, or assigned a safety-sensitive job, people have a right to be left alone.”

Couldn’t resist a little bit of photoshop fun.

It’s not even directly a drug war story, other than the fact that the tactics are part of, and have grown from, the drug war.

If you haven’t read about this already, you owe it to yourself.

A man was suspected of cockfighting, so Sheriff Joe Arpaio got an arrest warrant, and showed up… with armored vehicles including a tank… and Steven Seagal. Then they killed all the chickens, so I guess Steven Seagal and Joe Arpaio won.

See Radley Balko’s first report and bizarre follow-up.

Watch the video. It’s unbelievable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BxPjDCuqjg

This post at Opposing News includes Senator Jay Rocefeller’s full response to why he confirmed Michele Leonhart for head of the DEA.

His letter is almost perfectly typical of the kind of response you get from so many elected officials on this issue, and could almost serve as a template.

Here’s the exciting conclusion:

You should know that I am opposed to the recreational use of all illegal drugs. I am very proud of my long record of fighting drug abuse and crime related to it. I have voted to support harsh penalties for drug offenders and have worked hard to make funding available so our police can properly train and equip themselves for the war on drugs. I believe it is very important to punish drug offenders, help the addicted when we can, and keep drugs away from our children, and my votes in the Senate reflect those values.

At the same time, I believe that our government must enact policies that are effective, and not merely punitive, as we work to prevent drug abuse. That is why I am committed to providing treatment where it is appropriate, enforcement where it is necessary, and education in healthful choices for everyone. Rehabilitation services must be a priority in order to help those with drug addiction, which could save many lives and many families, and over time will be a bargain compared to the ravages of crime, increased health care costs, and the overwhelming costs of incarcerating so many of our state’s youth.

Thank you again for being in touch. I wish you the very best.
With Warm Regards,

Jay Rockefeller

I like the “wishing you the best” and “warm regards” after salivating over punishing people.

ASAM issues white paper to halt medical marijuana use in many states

It’s a press release by the American Society of Addiction Medicine about their “white paper” opposing medical marijuana. It’s put together, in part, by Andrea Barthwell and Robert DuPont, so you know it’s full of lies and deception.

Here’s an organization that is actually inserting itself into the realm of other medical professionals to tell them what they should or should not do, all to protect the profits of the treatment industry.

This is outstanding.

Press Release

Being launched today by NGOs from around the world as a side event of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna: The War on Drugs – Count the Costs.

Speakers will outline the many costs of the war on drugs, and the aims of the campaign, to an audience of international policy makers, NGO representatives, and media. See the new project website here: www.countthecosts.org for more details

The War on Drugs: Count the Costs campaign will bring together interested parties from around the world, including NGOs, policy makers and others whose work is negatively impacted by international drug enforcement. Together they will call on governments and international agencies to meaningfully evaluate the unintended consequences of the war on drugs and explore evidence-based alternatives.

This is something I’ve been interested in, and talking about, for years, and, if I ever get time to do it, is the subject of the book I’m writing: Prohibition Isn’t Free (which is also the name of our Foundation).

Of course, the prohibitionists hate talking about the costs. They want the discussion to be limited to:

• Prohibition: x amount of drug harm
• Legalization: >x amount of drug harm

Not only is that comparison unsustainable, it most importantly ignores all the costs of prohibition.

Nice to see a global effort on this topic.

The National Cancer Institute website (a .gov site that’s part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health) has a new Information Summary on the use of Cannabis and its components for people with cancer-related symptoms caused by the disease itself or its treatment.

It’s actually quite good, and pretty handily disputes what much of the rest of the government is saying.

New Report Finds “Drug Courts Are Not the Answer”

At two briefings on Capitol Hill today, the Drug Policy Alliance released a groundbreaking new report, Drug Courts are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use (www.drugpolicy.org/drugcourts), which finds that drug courts have not demonstrated cost savings, reduced incarceration, or improved public safety; leave many people worse off for trying; and have actually made the criminal justice system more punitive toward addiction – not less.

War on drugs as failed, say former heads of MI5, CPS, and BBC

The “war on drugs” has failed and should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem, according to prominent public figures including former heads of MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service. […]

The MPs and members of the House of Lords, who have formed a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, are calling for new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence.

It could lead to calls for the British government to decriminalise drugs, or at least for the police and Crown Prosecution Service not to jail people for possession of small amounts of banned substances.

Defendant Sentenced to 18 Years on 11 Gram Federal Crack Conviction

TalkLeft has a good piece discussing the absurdity of sentencing that is based on charges for which the defendant has been acquitted. It’s a real injustice and a violation of the very concept of jury trials.

The always excellent Radley Balko is moving on from Reason Magazine soon to begin writing at Huffington Post — a chance to reach a much larger audience (and perhaps an audience that needs to hear what he has to report). Good luck, Radley!

Here are a few of his current pieces that should not be missed…

Failing Upward in Criminal Justice

Paey’s prosecution was an outrage, and it generated significant media attention. In 2007, after Paey had served nearly four years of his sentence, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist gave him a full pardon. Yet Scott Andringa, who prosecuted the case as an assistant state attorney in New Port Richey, has never expressed a hint of remorse. In fact, Andringa, now a defense attorney in private practice, brags about his efforts to imprison Paey on his professional website, noting that he “was the prosecutor assigned to a controversial drug trafficking case that was later profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and in the New York Times.”

And now Andringa wants to be a judge.

How Drug Cops Go Bad

Critics of prohibition often argue that drug cops are especially susceptible to corruption because their jobs regularly bring them into contact with black-market cash and large quantities of illicit substances worth more than the average police officer makes in a year. There is something to that, but I think the problem runs deeper. Drug crimes are consensual crimes, which means there are no aggrieved victims to file a complaint. The only way to fight consensual crimes is with surveillance, informants, or undercover cops. Surveillance requires a warrant, which requires some evidence of criminal activity. The latter two options are far more common, but they require the police to break the very laws they are enforcing—or encourage someone else to do so. That creates a moral disconnect right off the bat.

Politicians paint cross-hairs on Americans

To date, there has been little outcry from the press, and not a single national politician from either the Democratic or Republican parties has condemned or even questioned the increasing use of government violence against Americans.

It will be a welcome day when America’s political and media figures get as indignant about innocent Americans killed by their own government as they do on those thankfully rare occasions when deranged people carry out attacks on government officials.