Drug WarRant

Update: I’ve received two reminder notices on Facebook about the event for tonight, so it looks like it’s happening.

This could be interesting…

Reflections on the Drug War: A Conversation with John P. Walters

John P. Walters, Drug Czar for nearly the entire Bush Presidency, reflects on the successes and failures of national drug control policy, the case for fighting substance abuse, and ongoing challenges in the Drug War. Extensive time will be allotted for questions.

The event is sponsored by University Republicans and SGFC.

Please invite your friends.

Thursday, January 13
7 pm – 8:30 pm
University of Chicago Social Science Research Building, Room 122

Note: I haven’t found any other references to this event on the U. of Chicago website so far, so I can’t verify the Facebook event, but a chance for extensive questions (and I don’t mean disruption) with John Walters could be very exciting.

If you do go, and questions actually happen, remember that a Q&A is much different than a debate. In a Q&A, the A controls the room and can answer or dodge at will and usually the Q has extremely limited opportunity to follow-up or to force A to actually answer. Brief statements of damning provable fact with a request to comment are usually best.

Example:

Why did you consistently imply that treatment admissions were proof of marijuana’s harm, when you knew that the majority of those in treatment for marijuana were there as criminal justice referrals?

or

NIDA funded the largest study in the world which conclusively showed no link between even heavy marijuana smoking and lung cancer. Why then, does the government continue to imply that there is one? Are there so few actual health problems with marijuana that you feel the need to scare us with non-existent ones?

Keep your questions from rambling. Don’t raise your voice or use foul language. Come prepared with facts, but don’t use them all at once.

Ron Hill does a pretty good job of responding to David Frum’s piece over at FrumForum with this more thoughtful Even If Reefers Cause Madness, They Shouldn’t be Illegal

Hill makes it clear that he’s no fan of marijuana

David Frum’s post on marijuana and schizophrenia has inspired much debate and criticism, yet his statement that marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia is correct. It’s also true that continued marijuana use may help trigger future psychotic episodes among those suffering from this serious brain disease.

Frum makes some valid points about marijuana and government policy; and I don’t endorse its use.

If that’s all you read, you’d think that it’s a full-throated endorsement of Frum’s bizarre and untimely piece, but it’s not. Read the whole thing.

Here’s an important part of the difference between the two. Both Frum and Hill say that marijuana is “associated” with schizophrenia. Both Frum and Hill seem to understand that “associated with” is not the same as “causation.” (That’s already a quantum leap above most casual commentators.)

But where Frum disregards even the plain reading of the article to which he links, Hill goes a step further and really tries to understand the uncertainty of the science:

Keeping marijuana banned or toughening penalties for its use is not the solution for isolated acts of violence by alleged schizophrenics (due to the genetic factor in schizophrenia, these individuals appear to have been at high risk of experiencing a psychotic episode regardless of whether they smoked marijuana).

It’s also possible that a person who is developing schizophrenia may begin using marijuana to self medicate during the prodromal stage of schizophrenia – meaning, the earliest phase of a developing condition. In this instance, the developing schizophrenic mind may precede the marijuana use; with marijuana used to cope with the effects of internal changes in brain functioning prior to what many call a psychotic episode. This would make it appear that marijuana hastened or “caused” the psychotic episode as the disease is often not diagnosed until after the first such episode. In this scenario, marijuana use may be a warning sign that someone may be developing schizophrenia, rather than a contributing factor in the schizophrenia.

It’s also possible that marijuana use is one of many factors that mix with genetics to trigger schizophrenia in those already genetically predisposed to it. Yet even if this is the case, it doesn’t justify the need for a continued expensive war on drugs financed by the taxpayers and the resulting government intrusion into the private lives of citizens.

Even more important than the uncertainty of the role of marijuana in the tiny fraction of the population that has schizophrenia is the ridiculous notion of using that to validate marijuana laws.

But to suggest that marijuana should remain illegal because its use is contraindicated in some part of the population makes as much sense as arguing that alcohol should be illegal because its use is sometimes contraindicated as well. This is particularly true since deaths from marijuana are almost unheard of, yet alcohol misuse is directly blamed in the deaths of 79,646 Americans between 2001 and 2005, according to the CDC. I have also known bipolar patients to misuse caffeine and tobacco in an effort to bring on a manic state, at which point they may become a danger to themselves or others. Should tobacco and caffeine fall under tighter regulation also? Where does it end?

Keeping marijuana banned or toughening penalties for its use is not the solution for isolated acts of violence by alleged schizophrenics…

Final thought. We know next to nothing about the Tucson shooter. We don’t know the specifics of any mental illness he may or may not have (everything I’ve read is amateur conjecture). We know very little about his specific drug use or patterns. We know absolutely nothing about his drug use and its supposed connection to the act in question. And even if we knew all of those things with certainty, it would be absolute lunacy to craft public policy for everyone based on him.

Soros-funded Dope Lobby in Damage Control Over Shootings by… Cliff Kinkaid

Kinkaid is so far over the edge that even the crazies are afraid to touch him, so don’t go to the bother of actually fisking this story unless it’s for fun.

Because of the evidence that Loughner was a pothead, and the evidence that marijuana abuse is linked to mental illness, the Soros-funded marijuana lobby is working overtime to try to draw media attention away from his addiction to the drug. […]

A photograph of a smirking Jared Loughner, after he was taken into custody, seems to prove beyond doubt that he is seriously disturbed, as a result of prolonged drug use. He exhibited symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. […]

Now she is fighting for her life because of bullets fired from the gun of a certified marijuana addict. […]

Ironically, Arizona voters in November narrowly passed Proposition 203, making Arizona the 15th state to allow for the scam known as “medical marijuana.” This will have the effect of increasing distribution of the drug.

Remember that the Pentagon shooter from California was a “medical marijuana” patient but was obviously not helped by the drug being prescribed by a physician. […]

One of those people was Arizona shooter Jared Loughner. The passage of Proposition 203 guarantees there will be more like him.

F. James Sensenbrenner.

Sensenbrenner Named House Crime Subcommittee Chair

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, will be the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. Sensenbrenner, 67, is a former chairman of the full Judiciary Committee. On the subcommittee, he succeeds Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) Sensenbrenner will bring a much more conservative perspective to criminal justice issues.

Here’s one of Sensenbrenner’s past highlights

The “Defending America’s Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005″ (H.R. 1528) was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) on April 6, and it has already passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

The list of atrocities in this bill are unbelievable. Here are a couple of examples:

• 10-year sentence for a second offense of distributing marijuana to a person under 21. (this would include one 20-year-old college student giving a joint to another 20-year old college student)
• Three-year mandatory minimum for parents who witness or learn about drug trafficking activities, targeting or even near their children, if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender.
• Increase to five years the federal mandatory minimum sentence for the sale of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school, college, public library, drug treatment facility (or any place where drug treatment, including classes, are held), or private or public daycare facilities – in short, almost anywhere in cities across the U.S.
• Punishes defendants for the “relevant conduct” of co-conspirators that occurred BEFORE the defendant joined the conspiracy.

Fortunately, that one never made it. Can’t wait to see what he’s got up his sleeve.

Perhaps the police officers in 20 cruisers from Gatineau and Surete du Quebec in Canada have heard the term “skunk” being used to refer to potent marijuana in the U.K. (or, formerly, crappy marijuana in the U.S.). But the truth is, while such cannabis does have a pungent smell, it doesn’t actually smell like… skunk.

Man angry after gun-point raid at his home

A rural Gatineau, Que., family is angry at police who raided their home armed with loaded guns looking for a marijuana grow-op, which turned out to only be a skunk that lived on their property. […]

The father of two was met by Gatineau officers who declared they had a warrant to search his home and arrest him.

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” said MacQuat, who was handcuffed and seated on a stool while officers searched his home.

“That scared the living daylights out of me. They were very respectful, but it’s very humiliating to be wearing handcuffs and to have people going through your house.”

He was told the skunk smell — which is noticeable when driving by — was also similar to that of a grow-op. […]

Minutes later, the scene’s senior officer walked inside to inform fellow officers the smell was, after all, just a skunk as MacQuat had pleaded.

“They were really embarrassed by it, but they were very sincere in their apologies,” said Macquat, who owns his own auto body shop.

“But had they done their investigation more thoroughly, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” […]

The force would not comment on the incident when reached Saturday.

But the family said officers were not rough and even cleaned their shoes before they entered.

At least the police were polite. Can you imagine a drug raid here in the U.S. where the police cleaned their shoes before entering?

I knew this was coming. Only a matter of when.

David Frum:

After horrific shootings, we hear calls for stricter regulation of guns. The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana.

Jared Lee Loughner, the man held as the Tucson shooter, has been described by those who know as a “pot smoking loner.”

He had two encounters with the law, one for possession of drug paraphanalia. […]

After the Tucson shooting, there may be renewed pressure to control the weapons that committed the crime. But what about the drugs that may have aggravated the killer’s mental disease? The trend these days seems toward a more casual attitude and easier access to those drugs. Among the things we should be discussing in the aftermath of this horror is the accumulating evidence of those drugs’ potential contribution to making some dangerous people even more dangerous than they might otherwise have been.

Over 100,000 100 million Americans have smoked pot. Coincidentally, among that many people, there are some wackos.

Serial killer Ted Bundy started as a paper boy. Maybe we should look into outlawing that. John Wayne Gacy dressed as a clown. Now that’s enough to turn anyone into a serial killer. Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian. Hmmm…

I wonder if Jared Loughner eats Twinkies.

Nice People Take Drugs by Tony Newman in Huffington Post.

We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren’t going anywhere. Drugs have been around for thousands of years and will be here for thousands more. We need to educate people about the possible harms of drug use, offer compassion and treatment to people who have problems, and leave in peace the people who are not causing harm. And we need to take action against the incarceration of so many of our brothers and sisters who are suffering behind bars because of the substance that they choose to use.

Nice People Take Drugs. That’s why the war on drugs is a war on us.

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Newt Gingrich: Prison reform: A smart way for states to save money and lives

We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons. Several states have recently shown that they can save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations.

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Legalizing Drugs Would Stop The Bleeding by Tom Condon

The illegal drug trade doesn’t just cripple American cities. It bankrolls international terrorism and has turned parts of Mexico into war zones. The whole thing is crazy. What other crime has an organization of police officers, judges and prosecutors, such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, working for its repeal?

The failed war on drugs has cost Hartford and Connecticut a bloody fortune, and hasn’t worked. Well, the city and the state now have extreme budget difficulties. Now is the time to try something different. In mid-March, Leadership Greater Hartford and others will sponsor a forum on this topic, which I will moderate, with the goal of really making a change in drug policy. I’ll keep you posted on time and place.

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Judge, prosecutors: Pot is ‘no big deal’

The response to a recent column about the legalization of pot has me more convinced than ever the time has come to end a costly, dangerous and ineffective prohibition.

But don’t take my word for it.

Maybe you can imagine my surprise when Iowa 7th District Senior Associate Judge Douglas McDonald, of Bettendorf, wrote to say he also hopes to see cases of pot possession “de-emphasized or legalized.”

McDonald is 75. He served on the bench from 1988 until his retirement in 2007. He continues to serve on a part-time basis. He has never tried marijuana.

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Ann Coulter and John Stossel discuss drug prohibition. I could only watch half of the five minute discussion, but go for it, if you can handle it.

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This is an open thread.

This looks interesting.

A series of 8 concerts in Canada, the US and Europe will feature major artists who support ending the war on drugs. During the concerts there will be intermittent videos and images that show the real victims of the war on drugs, along with brief appearances by celebrities, politicians, policy reformers and representatives of victims groups talking about why they support the end of the Drug War. A communications plan for each event will focus on local media and provide Drug War content, interviews with celebrities, policy reformers, victims groups and other supporters. Venues will be for audiences of 20,000 and up. International artists as well as local and national artists will be featured in each location.

Looks like we may unfortunately have a new one to add to the Drug War Victims page.

Radley Balko has been covering the Framingham, Massachussetts botched raid here and here.

If this case plays out like most of those before it, Eurie Stamps’ death won’t change a damn thing. His will be just another body on the growing pile of drug war collateral damage.

Update: [Thanks, Malcolm]

Video news report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GtUvEA_9pg (embedding disabled)

One of the worst Supreme Court decisions of recent years was Caballes v. Illinois, where Justice Stevens wrote for the majority that merely having a dog accuse you was enough to justify a 4th Amendment search with no other suspicion needed. He wrote:

A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.”

… and with that, he put the Supreme Court seal of approval on police fishing expeditions.

He wrote that as if the Fourth Amendment was merely an issue of criminals’ rights as opposed to citizens’ rights. And apparently, in the world of most of the Justices, dogs are completely infallible, because absolutely no thought was given to the rights of innocent drivers not to have their cars ripped apart on the side of the highway.

The Supremes completely failed in part because they didn’t demand proof of canine infallibility, and also because they failed to understand statistical math. We went ahead and crunched the numbers to show that even high-percentage-success dogs will infringe the rights of a horrific number of innocent citizens.

A few years later, I revisited Caballes while reviewing a piece of absolute rubbish by James B. Johnston of Seton Hall University, who fawned over Stevens’ horrible decision without an ounce of research or thought.

Just last month, someone (perhaps Johnston) left a message stating that:

Since you are such an expert on Mr. Johnston and his “drivel” note this. His article was cited as an authority in a brief filed by the Florida Attorney General’s Office to the Florida Supreme Court. The case was a drug sniffing dog case. Guess what. The Forida AG won. Some “drivel” . You and your fellow apologists for the drug trade really need to get over yourselves..

That doesn’t make it not drivel. It just means that the Florida Supreme Court was also dead wrong, and Johnston just helped them screw it up.

Well, just in case anybody still believed that this was a good decision, some hard data is now out.

[Chicago] Tribune analysis: Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong — High number of fruitless searches of Hispanics’ vehicles cited as evidence of bias.

The dogs are trained to dig or sit when they smell drugs, which triggers automobile searches. But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.

For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.

For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent. That means that when you see a couple of police cars on the highway with their lights flashing, with officers going through a car, searching through the trunk, while some poor Hispanic youth stands nervously by, 73 percent of the time, the driver was innocent. Of course, the search took a long time, so by now maybe he was late to his job (“Why were you late?” “The police were searching my car.”) or maybe even to a date.

It’s not victimless. And clearly, based on the numbers, not only are Hispanics being targeted, but it’s likely that the officers are passing on to their canines their desire that the Hispanic be a druggie (and dogs are often eager to please).

“Is there a potential for handlers to cue these dogs to alert?” he asked. “The answer is a big, resounding yes.”

That frustrates Martinez, the attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Dogs do not have the human failings that have led to the targeting of minorities, but Martinez worries that an officer’s bias can translate through the dog leash. She fears drug-sniffing dogs are another tool to justify roadside searches of innocent drivers, the unfair consequences of what she called “driving while Mexican.”

“People of color are just targets,” she said.

I really love the way law enforcement responds to this study:

Dog-handling officers and trainers argue the canine teams’ accuracy shouldn’t be measured in the number of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or paraphernalia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs’ noses are so sensitive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.

Oh, that’s convenient. Just claim that every innocent person that was targeted probably had the smell of pot on their jacket and that’s why Spot alerted.

Well, if that’s the case, then make it illegal to smell like drugs and then prove in court that there was a physical odor present. Otherwise, it’s just a convenient unprovable excuse for you to justify the unlawful violation of people’s Fourth Amendment rights.

And… “accuracy shouldn’t be measured in the number of alerts that turn up drugs” Really? How should it be measured? You don’t get to just pretend that searches of innocent citizens didn’t happen.