Drug WarRant

The government is once again seeking the elusive “drug free” fantasy.

National Institute on Drug Abuse:

Please share: It’s Red Ribbon Week (Oct 23-31). Be part of the creation of a drug-free America by taking the Red Ribbon pledge: http://bit.ly/151SyIp

Drug-free America? Really? How?

I asked them for their definition of “drug free America,” but they haven’t responded.

How would they even answer that?

After all, our bodies create drugs that are necessary for our survival, so achieving a true drug-free America would require an act of genocide so horrific that it would dwarf the holocaust. Perhaps Homeland Security’s SWAT teams should pay a visit to the NIDA offices to see what they’re plotting.

But who knows… maybe NIDA has some other, secret, definition of drug-free that doesn’t actually include being… drug-free. Maybe they mean that they want America to stop taking drugs, ie, external drugs as opposed to bodily processes.

Of course, that would mean going after caffeine, so why isn’t NIDA campaigning against Starbucks? Or having meetings with Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies and asking them to stop making drugs?

Hmmm… I guess drug-free may be an even more restrictive definition to NIDA. Let’s see what else we can discover.

From their link, we find: “We will set a good example for our children by not using illegal drugs or medicine without a prescription.”

It’s certainly not drug-free, but it’s a more specific goal — aimed at the use of an arbitrary list of drugs that have been deemed illegal. But while individuals could live up to such a pledge, there’s still no way that America would stop using all such drugs, so a pledge won’t help them achieve a “drug-free” (under their definition) goal.

But wait — maybe we can help! If the goal is to achieve an America where nobody uses illegal drugs, that’s actually possible.

All we have to do is legalize all drugs.

It’s simple and effective.

May seem like a simple number, but it’s very big.

New Gallup Poll

58% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana
39% oppose

That’s a 19% differential.

Tipping point passed.

Very interesting, though not surprising…

Accidentally Revealed Document Shows TSA Doesn’t Think Terrorists Are Plotting to Attack Airplanes

… apparently a clerk at the 11th Circuit appeals court forgot to file the document under seal, allowing them to find out what was under the redactions… Included in there is the following, apparently quoted from the TSA’s own statements:

“As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing.”

Elsewhere, the TSA appears to admit that “due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers,” it’s unlikely that there’s much value in terrorists trying to hijack a plane these days (amusingly, that statement is a clear echo of Bruce Schneier’s statement criticizing the TSA’s security theater — suggesting that the TSA flat out knows that airport security is nothing more than such theatrics).

So we’re using tools that bend (or break) the bill of rights under the guise that they’re preventing terrorism. Right.

Amazingly, it appears that the government forced Corbett to redact the revelation that the TSA’s own threat assessments have shown “literally zero evidence that anyone is plotting to blow up an airline leaving from a domestic airport.” Corbett argues that this shows why the searches are not reasonable under the 4th Amendment. Corbett also points out that about the only thing the machines seem useful at catching are illegal drugs — but, as he notes, that’s “irrelevant to aviation security.” Sure, the government may like the fact that it catches illegal drugs with these machines, but the TSA can’t argue it needs the machines for “terrorism” when it knows that’s not true, and then tries to keep them just because it finds some narcotics…

As so often is the case, the war on terror and the war on drugs are not about their stated purposes.

Jacob Sullum thinks proposed marijuana taxes will be too high. Mark Kleiman thinks they’ll be too low.

• High Marijuana Taxes Could Derail Legalization Plans – Jacob Sullum
• Cannabis taxes will wind up too low, not too high – Mark Kleiman

I’ll let you read the two competing pieces and see where you think reality will land. I haven’t studied the tax proposals enough to have a prediction. I will say that I’m not personally opposed to a cannabis tax, in large part because it’ll make it harder to reverse legalization once governments get a taste. But it’s important that taxes be low enough to encourage people to quickly switch to legal channels.

In trying to decide between the two, you can’t really be faulted for questioning the reliability of Kleiman’s arguments, given the petty and petulant way Mark deals with people who have a different opinion.

Once again, Mark trots out the tired and offensive “you must be smoking” ad hominem:

“Anyone who’s worried about the price of cannabis is spending far too much time stoned.”

[Update: Mark explains his use of this argument in comments. Though not obvious, I can see how it could be read that way.]

It’s a ridiculous argument device that he uses to a bizarre extent.

Later on, he tries to “refute” Sullum in advance by attacking libertarianism in general.

Naturally, true-believing libertarians insist that cannabis legalization be done in the way likely to generate bad outcomes. Taxes BAD! Regulations BAD! “Commercial speech” is SACRED! The free market FOREVER! And of course drug abuse is a merely imaginary problem, so cannabis is just an ordinary commodity that the market will handle perfectly.

Again, a common Kleiman technique – refer to differences of opinion regarding how policy will work as opponents’ desiring a bad outcome. I’ve never heard a libertarian say that drug abuse is an imaginary problem – they just disagree with Kleiman regarding the best way to deal with it.

The slogan at the “Reality-Based Community” is “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” What they don’t say is that Kleiman treats his opinions as if they were facts.

More violence in the drug war in Mexico is nothing to laugh at, but I couldn’t help it when reading this headline:

Mexico drug lord shot dead by clown assassins

It immediately made me think of the movie “Real Men” starring James Belushi and John Ritter.

A friend shares his personal story:

In 2010, as part of my conditions of probation, I was asked to enter a drug treatment program for treatment of my dependence on cannabis.

I was reccomended a treatment center by the court system, which I went to. The guy who owned the treatment center sat down and did my intake appointment… we ended up getting pretty friendly and he came out of left field with the following request….. “if you can help me out I can help you out”. What ended up happening was I paid the guy $200 for his pocket, $200 for the classes, and he signed a paper saying that I had completed 20 hours of drug treatment………

Now, at the moment, I did it. Of course. I smoke pot… I’m not dependent on substances, I was happy to not have to sit through a bullshit class about drug dependency and DUI’s. But as time has gone on and I see how our criminal justice system works it truly saddens me and I had to speak up about it. Our criminal justice system is a RACKET, the war on drugs is a joke and if people don’t wake the fuck up and try to make a change……. we stay in the same revolving circle. […] Truly makes me sick.

Just one of an incredibly long list of rackets driven by this drug war.

At least that’s apparently the view Iran has of drug offenders.

Reminiscent of over-the-top villian movies where the bad guy tortures his victim to death, and then brings them back to life in order to exact more torture…

Iran to hang drug dealer twice

According to official state media, a doctor declared the man dead after the 12 minute-hanging, but when the prisoner’s family went to collect his body the following day he was found to still be breathing.

He is currently in hospital, but a judge reportedly said he would be executed again “once medical staff confirm his health condition is good enough”.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve talked about the Sunrise police before, but this is an amazing investigative report in the Sun Sentinel:

Cops. Cash. Cocaine. How Sunrise police make millions selling drugs by Megan O’Matz and John Maines.

In most drug stings, the police attempt to buy drugs from dealers. But in Sunrise, the police sell the drugs. And instead of trying to bust people in their community, they lure people to Sunrise from all over the country to buy cocaine from the police, and then take their money and cars.

They have a network of informants who go out and find buyers and get them to come to Sunrise. Some of these informants are paid (usually a percent of the take), while others are victims of previous reverse stings and now are working to reduce their sentences. One paid informant has made over $800,000 in the past 5 years.

This investigative report has amazing detail, down to the individual amounts that informants have been paid and the incredible amount of overtime paid to police (from their profits, of course).

Kudos to the writers for bringing all this detail to light and showing just how much the drug war is a profit-driven business.

Ethan gave a particularly stirring and effective speech at the Nantucket Project last week.

I enjoyed this quote defining who we are as drug policy reformers:

We’re the people who love drugs, we’re the people who hate drugs, we’re the people who don’t give a damn about drugs, but every one of us believes that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with the reality of drugs in our society.

Yep.

The speech is about 20 minutes, but it’s quite engaging, so the time flies by. Very nice job and worth a watch.

I struggled a little bit with his drug policy reform objective statement:

The objective of drug policy reform is to reduce the role of criminalization and the criminal justice system in drug control to the maximum extent consistent with protecting public safety and health.

I think it’s a good statement — he’s definitely on the right track and he’s trying not to make it even longer or more convoluted, but I guess my own bias is that I’m not sure that “reduce” is a sufficiently strong term when talking about the criminal justice system and drug policy. Because it isn’t just a matter of lessening the devastation of the criminal justice system, but also of recognizing that other methods besides the criminal justice system can be more effective in reducing the harms of drug abuse (without adding their own harms).

Perhaps adding two words: “…to reduce and replace the role of criminalization…” would strengthen that statement a bit.

Alternatively, I might take a different approach to the notion and say that the ultimate goal of drug policy reform is to achieve a system of drug controls whereby the negative effects of drug abuse are lessened to the extent possible without adding negative effects to society from the controls themselves. (That’s also not perfect, but I may continue to work on it.)