AG Holder seeks to reduce punishments for non-violent drug offenders

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Given the country's overcrowded jails, given the ridiculousness of putting people in prison for long periods of time simply for non-violently violating the country's insane anti-drug laws, and given the cruel stupidity of mandatory minimum sentences, this is certainly promising:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Monday that low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to gangs or large-scale drug organizations will no longer be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory sentences.

The new Justice Department policy is part of a comprehensive prison reform package that Holder unveiled in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco. He also introduced a policy to reduce sentences for elderly, nonviolent inmates and find alternatives to prison for nonviolent criminals.

And his assessment of the problem, while limited, is pretty much on the mark:

"We must face the reality that, as it stands, our system is, in too many ways, broken," Holder said. "And with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, to deter and to rehabilitate — not merely to warehouse and to forget."

"A vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities," Holder said Monday.

Yes, it's broken, badly broken. But why not go further? Why not put an end to the failed "war on drugs" altogether -- and so legalize or decriminalize where possible, while elevating recovery and rehabilitation (especially for those who are no threat to society) above punishment?

This is a start, but some truly progressive reforms are in order. Because, let's face it, the other way, a combination of moralism and vengeance, simply doesn't work.

Lawyers, guns, and money

By Capt. Fogg

This is the title of the song, and as the song goes, the shit has hit the fan, at least for John Hammar, an ex-Marine from Ft. Pierce, Florida, a town just a few miles north of me. I'm sure you've heard that he's been jailed under one of Mexico's tough and comically ineffective gun control laws. Of course, your sense of comedy may differ on this point.

Seems Hammer and his friend had planned to drive across the Mexican border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear -- and an old shotgun he'd inherited from his great grandfather which, as purchased from Sears, has a 24" barrel -- an inch too short for Mexico, although just fine in Florida. U.S. officials told him that all he had to do was to file some papers with the Mexican authorities and it would be legal, but they were wrong and Mr. Hammar now sits chained to a cot in a Mexican jail cell hoping at least for lawyers and money. No more guns please.

Fox News of course is running around screaming and yelling about "trumped up charges," which seems strange, U.S. laws about barrel length being just as arbitrary as Mexico's and carrying punishments at least as severe. In fact, U.S. laws require gun owners to know more than you'd expect the average lawyer knows and are just as arbitrary as concerns lengths and dates of manufacture and type of stock. It's possible in fact for a gun to be quite legal to send through the mail and an identical one with a one digit serial number difference to be felonious. It's possible to own a handgun to which fitting a folding stock can put you in jail for being below a certain arbitrary barrel length. Mexican law, unbeknownst to Hammar and his advisors, classifies a nearly antique relic from Sears Roebuck as a military weapon, a practice quite akin to the U.S. classification of an ordinary rifle as being an assault rifle because of the shape of the stock or the country of manufacture. 

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Invade Mexico, says Perry

By Michael J.W. Stickings

By the way, while it's understandable perhaps that so much attention is being focused on Rick Perry and "Niggerhead," what's much worse (given that we can't confirm whether Perry approved of that name or is actually a racist), and what is getting lost in the fray, is that the governor said on Saturday that he would consider invading Mexico, revving up the war on drugs, a disaster of a "war" already, if he were president.

If you want a reckless, irresponsible, and utterly ignorant gunslinger conducting U.S. foreign policy and acting the tough guy as commander-in-chief, a president who might just weaken America's credibility and moral standing in the world and entangle the country in disastrous foreign quagmires even more than Bush did, Perry's evidently your man.

Rick Perry suggests sending U.S. troops into Mexico to fight drug war

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a big-name, big-time Republican.

Elected lieutenant governor in 1998, he took over when the Supreme Court handed Bush the presidency two years later. He won gubernatorial elections in 2002 and 2006. Earlier this month, he won a third term with 55 percent of the vote.

And he is now set to head the Republican Governors Association.

Oh... and he wants to send the military across the border into Mexico:

Gov. Rick Perry says he's open to the idea of sending U.S. troops into Mexico to fight the drug war. The Texas governor told MSNBC [yesterday] morning that border violence has escalated dramatically since George W. Bush was governor a decade ago. He said more aggressive federal tactics are needed. "You have a situation on the border where American citizens are being killed, and you didn't see that back when George Bush was the governor," he said.

Host Chuck Todd asked whether Perry would advocate military involvement on the Mexican side of the border. Perry responded: "I think we have to have any aspect of law enforcement that we have including the military. I think we have the same situation we had in Columbia. Obviously, Mexico has to approve any type of assistance that we can give them. But the fact of the matter is these are people who are highly motivated for money, they are vicious, they are armed to the teeth. And I want to see them defeated. And any means we can to run these people off our border and to save Americans' lives we have to be engaged in."

Yes, he admits that Mexico would have to "approve" any such move, but it's not clear from this that Perry appreciates the concept of sovereignty. And would Mexico would really ever want American troops on its soil, troops over whom it would have no control?

All Perry shows here is that, like most other Republicans, he sees the military as the solution to America's various national security (or, in this case, drug) problems. As if the military isn't already overstretched, as if Iraq and Afghanistan aren't enough, as if the military is equipped to chase down and combat organized drug crime, as if the military can ever be a genuine instrument of law enforcement, particularly in another country.

This would be a recipe for disaster.

Yes, Rick Perry is our Craziest Republican of the Day -- maybe of the week, perhaps even of the month.

American blood on American Soil

By Capt. Fogg

Well maybe not blood - it was only some bits of stucco and brick, but you know. . .

President Barack Obama is "gambling with Human lives" says Texas Governor Rick Perry. I'm afraid he's not talking about any of our current foreign wars, and anyway, gambling with military lives is worth the patriotic fervor we need to keep the proles supporting Republicans.

He's not talking about the death cult that executes prisoners without much apparent concern for evidence of innocence. He's not talking about tossing out mining or oil drilling safety rules as "communism." He's talking about a stray bullet coming harmlessly across the border into El Paso from Juarez and hitting a wall, shedding American brick dust on American soil. It's happened once or twice before with no harm done to anyone, but it's Obama's fault according to the hysterical hyperbole of Rick because -- well just because.

Human Lives are being endangered because Obama is president and the failure of previous administrations to stem corruption in a country not our own is not worth discussing lest it place blame upon white shoulders, or heaven forfend; Texas gubernatorial shoulders and take all the fun out of our national game of "pin the blame on Obama." Yes, says Rick, we should amass troops on the border but to what effect he doesn't tell us. The drug lords we finance with our drug policies aren't going to notice or care. Perhaps they could form as a wall of human flesh to stop the spent bullet that strays over the border every few years? Or perhaps he'd like to invade Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales. After all we haven't stolen any property from Mexico for years and we really need another illegal invasion, don't we? We'd be protecting Amer4ican lives and we'd be welcomed as liberators and it would pay for itself and there are credible rumors of enchiladas of Mass Destruction. Remember the stray bullet! Never forget! wave more flags! Unhinged we stand!

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Same old, same old

By Capt. Fogg

Seems "the most liberal Senator in all of American history" is even more of a hide-bound conservative than I imagined, if it's true that he intends to beef up the misbegotten War on Drugs rather than admit that the 73-year-old enterprise has succeeded in doing to drug use, to organized crime, and to public safety what the Volstead Act did when it made private alcohol sales and consumption a crime.

President Barack Obama's new drug czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, told us just 8 months ago that the idiocy was over, that "we're not at war with people in this country," but action speaks louder than words.

The new budget for fiscal 2011's War on Drugs is increased over this year's, and the emphasis is still on "enforcement," which means more spitting on constitutional rights, more interference with private matters, more clogging up of courts, more disrupted families, more crime, more prisons training more harmless people to be criminals, and more ruining the lives of innocent people. In fact, it's more of George W. Bush and it's more of what has only made things worse and worse. Even so, that 15.5-billion-dollar budget vastly understates the cost to the nation as much as that of our former administration because it ignores the huge cost of incarceration and due process.

From "the War on Drugs is over" to:

In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans' drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse,

took us only 8 months, and a return to doing what always fails, a return to pseudo-moralistic prohibitions, fraudulent medical data, and a continuation of being the biggest jailer in the world makes liars out of the idiots shouting "liberal" as much as it makes liars of our administration.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Don't chug the bong water

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This has to be one of the stupidest court decisions ever. The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that bong water -- yes, bong water -- may be deemed to be an illegal drug if it contains a controlled substance. Now, sure, if it contains, say, a huge quantity of meth, I get it, sort of. But your usual bong water? Really?

Yes, really. Because, apparently, you could drink it later and get high. Now, I've never done that, and likely won't, but I can't say it sounds all that appealing.

The "war on drugs" is ridiculous enough already. But if there's still going to be a crackdown on illegal drugs, shouldn't there actually be, you know, drugs, not just bong water?

One toke over the line

By Capt. Fogg

Porque no tiene,
Porque le falta,
Marijuana que fumar.

I wonder how long we'll be able to keep the US/Mexico border under control with the number of crossings sure to increase by a factor of a hundred at any moment now. I have a feeling millions of Americans will be on their way south now that Mexico has decriminalized heroin, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamines and marijuana.

Andale! Arriba!

Raw Story reported this morning that small amounts of these drugs would now be tolerated:

Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico's corruption-prone police from shaking down casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check.

It won't do much to hurt tourism either. It remains to be seen whether they will see the same influx of foreign stoners that the Netherlands has had to deal with and the same problems with petty crime, but it is an indication that Mexico, at least, is tired of doing the same thing that's been making the situation worse and worse for nearly a century and trying to do something that won't feed the plague of violence and corruption.

The new law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution,

said Mexican attorney general Bernardo Espino del Castillo. Thanks Bernie and see y'all

South of the border.
Down Mexico way.


*Disclaimer -- The above post does not necessarily reflect the views of Capt. Fogg or anyone in particular and is intended to be a farcical and sophomoric attempt to get some laughs -- and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The teeth of the hydra

By Carl

I've spent many an hour trying to wrap my planet-sized brain around the enormity of the cultural problems affecting this country.

To be sure, I don't have many answers. Hillary Clinton might have some insight, though:

MEXICO CITY - The United States is at least as responsible as Mexico for the violent drug wars that are roiling its southern neighbor because of an insatiable US market for narcotics, the failure to stop weapons smuggling southward and a three-decade "war" on drugs that "has not worked," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians," Mrs. Clinton said.
"How could anyone conclude any differently? . . . I feel very strongly we have co-responsibility," she said.

Amen.

The gun and drug culture, believe it or not, are very tightly tied together, and I don't just mean the dealers who carry Glocks.

I mean that there is a subculture in America that attempts to subvert the system and pervert our citizenry by promoting both guns and drugs in tandem.

No, not video game authors and publishers, although I have no doubt they are complicit.

I mean the people who buy and use both of these items.

Now, I've made no bones about where I stand on guns. I think there is a limited need for legal guns for protection and provisions in some sectors of the country, but that on the whole, we should do whatever we can to limit and/or ban them. Period.

On drugs, I have a slightly different outlook. There are some drugs that are inherently so destructive that access to them ought to be as difficult as humanly possible, and in point of fact, I'd include tobacco on that list along with crystal meth, heroin, and possibly cocaine.

And then there are some drugs that are dangerous, but when used in moderation or under supervision should be decriminalized. LSD, mescaline, and cocaine (if it's not outright outlawed). And I do mean "under supervision."

Finally there are, or rather is, the drug that should be legalized, full stop: pot. And you can keep alcohol legal, as well. And I suppose I'd be grossly outvoted on my call for the closely guarded regulation of tobacco, so it likely would remain here, even if suicide by smoking is a leading cause of death in this country.

Hillary Clinton's acknowledgement of the sales of assault weapons across the Mexican border as a result of spats amongst rival gangs for the right to smuggle illegal drugs back into the United States highlights a rather disturbing fact: it is in the (legal) gun sellers' best interests to see (illegal) drugs flourish.

They have a vested financial interest in it. And that stinks. Drugs create gun users, both criminals and legal (since the crime rate goes up as drugs become more and more pricey).

By creating a criminal subculture-- 700,000 Americans are arrested each year for pot possession and sales alone, and that represents slightly less than half of all drug arrests in this country-- you create a need to take justice into one's own hands, rather than look to the legal authorities.

Legalize pot, for example, and 700,000 more Americans are walking the streets without a criminal tarnish every year. That could mean a few thousand or tens of thousands of illegal guns off the street. And illegal guns start somewhere along the lines as legal gun sales.

Not only that, but as crime rates decrease because of legal or decriminalized substances, legal gun ownership would wane slightly, since people will feel safer on the streets and in their own homes.

If the NRA has a problem with stemming supply, then why not turn the tables and lower demand? After all, it's not like 700,000 pot-laced zombies are going to start breaking and entering homes in search of Cheetos. The NRA would be hard-pressed to take offense at that point, even if that would expose the underbelly of the truism I've laid out here.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

How to win the war on some drugs

By Libby Spencer

The rising violence on our Mexican border is clearly driven by the black market drug trade. However, a military solution is not the answer. Adding more government soldiers to this 'war' will only cause more collateral damage among innocent civilians. Don't believe me? Well let's review.

In the beginning, there were a handful of very powerful drug lords who controlled the market. I don't know how many, let's just say there were five of them. There was some violence connected with these cartels, but it was contained pretty much within that community. In the last few years we jailed these kingpins and the violence rose, along with the supply of drugs. The current chaos is simply the manifestation of a very large turf war.

Jailing the kingpins didn't destroy the black market, it simply fractured it and now the jockeying for primacy among the lower level players has spilled into the streets and over the borders. The only way to end the violence is to shut down the black market. The only way to shut down the black market is to legalize drugs.

There is no way to eliminate demand. Surely if the present eradication/interdiction/incarceration model was going to work, it would have done so by now. The US alone has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into this strategy for over 50 years and the problem is worse than ever. The only way to get drugs off the streets is to put them into a clinical setting and treat drug abuse as a public health problem.

The war on some drugs really can't be won, but it can be ended. As scary as it sounds, legalization is the safest strategy and the only one with any chance of success.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Towards a sane marijuana policy

By Libby Spencer

Signaling an end to one of the most senseless and destructive aspects of US drug policy, AG Holder announced at a recent presser that the "Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law." Surely a relief to the terminally ill who depend on the plant to ease their pain, not to be forced into the black market to get their medicine. Arresting these people and their providers, who pose no real danger to society, cost us billions in tax dollars that could be better spent elsewhere.

Further, now matter what you think about the use of the plant as a medicine, the pure economics of generating income by allowing the dispensaries to operate instead of draining public coffers to shut them down, makes the strongest argument for the policy. Consider this for instance:

Harborside is charged an 8.75 percent tax. With revenue of around $1 million per month, its annual sales-tax bill comes in at something like $875,000 per year. And that's just one shop. Betty Yee, chairwoman of the State Board of Equalization, which oversees tax collection, told me that there's no way to break out exactly how much money the state is getting from pot clubs because it doesn't require them to state on their tax forms what product they sell. ("Regardless of legal status, anyone can get a seller's permit," she explained.) However, she did release the tax records of some clubs that had been raided by the federal government, noting that because they employed sizable numbers of people, they also paid state and federal income and payroll taxes. The Compassion Center, licensed by Alameda County, paid $3 million before being shuttered in October 2007 by the DEA. Nature's Medicinal, licensed by Kern Country, paid close to $1 million in 2007, which included $203,000 in state and federal income taxes, $365,000 in payroll taxes, and $427,000 in sales taxes. The Compassion Center employed and provided health benefits to fifty people; Nature's Medicinal twenty-five.

Additionally, marijuana legalization advocates estimate, if the plant was made legal for recreational use as well, the tax revenue in California alone would be in the range of $2 billion. At a time when the U.S. economy is tettering on the brink of collapse, our legislators would do well to listen to public opinion -- a majority of Americans support full legalization -- and consider ending the war on marijuana altogether. Our society has survived well with a thriving underground industry. It's about time we allowed the consumers to step out of the shadows and contribute to our economic health in the full light of day.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Must reads on the drug war

By Libby Spencer

The UN meets every ten years to decide on drug policy conventions. At the next meeting, three former Latin American presidents are preparing to call for an end to the so-called war. "Former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said there was no meaningful debate over drugs policy in the United States, despite a broad consensus that current policies had failed. ...[He] said Washington appeared increasingly isolated in its repressive approach as Latin America and Europe move toward treating drug abuse as a health problem rather than a crime."

In more good news on that front, Nora Callahan of November.org flags this news from PRI's The World:

LYNCH: Now, it looks like the tone is changing. Obama has long wanted to repeal the 1988 ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs inside the United States, but he needs Congress to go along to make that domestic change. So he’s shifting his gaze outward. In a significant break from both Mr. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama is making his support for needle exchange programs official, at least abroad. Today, Laura Tischler of the State Department confirmed the US is giving its negotiators new guidelines.

They're not going so far as to embrace some of the other sensible harm reduction programs such as legalized dispensaries for addicts but still it's a welcome change from the zero tolerance policy of the Bush regime. Nora also has a petition that calls for restoring earned early release parole to federal prisoners. Take a minute and sign it. This would be a big step to restoring some sanity to our sentencing structure and could alleviate prison overcrowding.

Johann Hari had a knockout piece on the big picture. One interesting fact, "Drugs syndicates control 8 percent of global GDP - which means they have greater resources than many national armies. They own helicopters and submarines and they can afford to spread the woodworm of corruption through poor countries, right to the top." Legalization would put these cartels out of business.

Radley writes the letter Michael Phelps shoud have. It starts like this:

Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. I'll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else for committing the same crimes he committed.

Meanwhile, SoBeale notices a hilarious promotion for the local hockey team. Bong hits for Michael.

And in other good news for the Olympic toker, SC decided not to pursue criminal charges because they didn't have enough physical evidence. Rumor has it part of the problem was too many other people had used the same bong for them to get DNA evidence. Not sure if that's true, but it is kind of funny.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"A country that does this and puts Tommy Chong in jail (nice work, Joe Biden) just isn’t a serious nation. Dissolve our federal, state, and local governments. Dissolve the courts. Screw the stimulus package. Let the banks fail. Let’s just say to hell with it all and let the country die a quick death and hope the Chinese do a better job governing us than we did." -- John Cole, reacting to the news that those who partied with Michael Phelps are being arrested for drug possession and distribution. Ridiculous.

Cannabis cure for Alzheimer's

By Libby Spencer

There are relatively only a handful of studies on the efficacy of medical marijuana because it's so difficult to get funding, much less authorization to conduct it, but here is one that shows great promise for marijuana based medicines that could cure Alzheimer's. Or at least mitigate some of its worst effects.

New research suggests that one of the active ingredients in marijuana—THC—and similar compounds could possibly prevent or even reverse one of the most devastating memory disorders of all: Alzheimer's disease.

In a paper published in the December 2008 issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging, researchers found that a compound that affects the same brain receptors as THC reduced brain inflammation and improved memory in older rats. (The rodents were the human equivalent of age 65 to 70.) Although there's debate over the role played by inflammation in Alzheimer's, many researchers believe it's an important part of the process that causes dementia.

Marijuana, an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, has been used medicinally for 10,000 years without one recorded overdose. It has already been proven to be useful in the treatment of a wide range of diseases. It's a shame that millions of terminally ill patients are denied its benefits because legitimate scientific inquiry is so often shut down by bureaucrats whose own interests are better served by continuing its total prohibition.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Radley Balko, live tonight at ATOP

By Libby Spencer

Art Of The Possible is hosting my long time fav, Radley Balko in a live chat tonight.

Radley Balko, Senior Editor of Reason, will appear here, on AoTP’s front page, on Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 7. p.m. [EDT]. We will have a post describing his superlative work in exposing drug “war” outrages and his other accomplishments shortly prior thereto on Wednesday, and Radley will take real-time questions in the comments to that post. Again, this WILL NOT take place in the chatroom!

I'm glad it's not in the chatroom. I'm not so good at using that format. Much easier to for me to chat in comments. It should be a great conversation. Hope to see you there.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

The long, lost war

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Iraq war (including the occupation) has been going on for a long time, has cost a huge amount of money (and lives), and has been lost (at least based on initial definitions of victory), but there is another war that has been doing on for much longer, has cost much more money and many lives, and that has also been lost.

What war is that? The war on drugs.

Former BBC reporter Misha Glenny has an excellent article at the Post on that war -- and on what has gone wrong. Here's a key passage:

The trade in illegal narcotics begets violence, poverty and tragedy. And wherever I went around the world, gangsters, cops, victims, academics and politicians delivered the same message: The war on drugs is the underlying cause of the misery. Everywhere, that is, except Washington, where a powerful bipartisan consensus has turned the issue into a political third rail.

The problem starts with prohibition, the basis of the war on drugs. The theory is that if you hurt the producers and consumers of drugs badly enough, they'll stop doing what they're doing. But instead, the trade goes underground, which means that the state's only contact with it is through law enforcement, i.e. busting those involved, whether producers, distributors or users. But so vast is the demand for drugs in the United States, the European Union and the Far East that nobody has anything approaching the ability to police the trade.

Prohibition gives narcotics huge added value as a commodity. Once traffickers get around the business risks -- getting busted or being shot by competitors -- they stand to make vast profits. A confidential strategy report prepared in 2005 for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet and later leaked to the media offered one of the most damning indictments of the efficacy of the drug war. Law enforcement agencies seize less than 20 percent of the 700 tons of cocaine and 550 tons of heroin produced annually. According to the report, they would have to seize 60 to 80 percent to make the industry unprofitable for the traffickers.

Supply is so plentiful that the price of a gram of heroin is plummeting in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom. As for cocaine, according to the UNODC, the street price of a gram in the United States is now less than $70, compared with $184 in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, that's a threefold drop.

The demand is enormous, the supply is there, and law enforcement efforts and military actions have barely made a dent. Whether it's been the police or the military waging the war, whether the U.S. or anyone else, the drug trade has flourished. Seriously, what exactly has been accomplished? By most accounts -- and by that I mean accounts other than those that hold sway in Washington -- hardly anything at all.

So what is to be done? Glenny doesn't have the answers, and neither do I. Simply, there are no easy answers. I can only repeat what I wrote back in March: "The point is to recognize that the war on drugs, the enforcement of illiberal laws that don't work, cannot succeed. Once that line is crossed, it will be possible to discuss in concrete terms what drugs should be legalized and how best to do so -- and to begin to educate ourselves (and our children) honestly about the risks associated with drug use."

I tend to favour broad legalization, but, again, the point is to move beyond the war on drugs. Why continue to wage a lost war that is costing so much?