US federal prisons overflowing with drug offenders

No country imprisons more of its citizens than the United States, where more than 2 million people are behind bars, or roughly 1 in 100 adults. The majority of those behind bars did not commit acts of violence, but were convicted of non-violent offenses, mostly involving drugs. Indeed, the war on drugs is responsible for quadrupling the U.S. incarceration rate over the last 30 years, which a new report shows has created dangerous levels of overcrowding in federal prisons.

In 1980, federal prisons held under 25,000 people. In 2013, federal prisons are now home to more than 219,000 people.

“This growth is unsustainable,” said Julie Samuels, a co-author of a new report from the Washington, DC-based Urban Institute, a think tank founded by US President Lyndon Johnson. For one, housing that people in state institutions is costly, with the federal prison budget for fiscal year 2014 of a projected $6.9 billion set to eat up more than a quarter of the Department of Justice’s total budget.

“Second, overcrowded federal prisons are dangerous, posing safety risks for staff and prisoners alike,” said Samuels. And US federal prisons are extremely overcrowded.

According to the report, “Stemming the Tide: Strategies to Reduce the Growth and Cut the Cost of the Federal Prison System,” the average federal detention center exceeds its planned capacity by 35 to 40 percent. Overcrowding is even more of a problem in high-security prisons, which as of 2012 were operating at 151 percent of their capacity.

Part of the increase is due to increased law enforcement targeting of immigrant communities. President Barack Obama has ordered more deportations than of his predecessors: 2 million people kicked out of the United States and counting, many of whom were picked up for minor infractions. But, “Though the number of inmates sentenced for immigration crimes has also risen, long drug sentences are the main driver of the population’s unsustainable growth.”

Bipartisan blame

The war on drugs, characterized by long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenders, disproportionately people of color, is not the product of any one president or party, but a policy agreed to by both major parties in the United States and prosecuted with enthusiasm by every president in modern history. Today, half of those in federal prisons are there for drug crimes that were once not treated as offenses worthy of prison time.

What changed is in 1984, the US Congress – at the time controlled by liberal Democrats – passed legislation requiring judges to issue long, mandatory minimum sentences to non-violent drug offenders. Called the “Sentencing Reform Act,” the bill was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican. The signing of that bill and later, bipartisan “tough-on-crime” legislation in the 1986 and 1988 at the height of the media-fueled “crack epidemic,” coincided with a trend of state psychiatric hospitals shutting down and kicking out patients who, in addition to mental health problems, often had serious substance abuse issues. While there were more than 500,000 people in such institutions in 1960, by 2010 that number was closer to 50,000. People who would have been put in a hospital were instead put in a prison.

As the Urban Institute notes, before the massive escalation of the drug war in the 1980s, “a quarter of all federal drug offenders were fined or sentenced to probation, not prison.” Today, “95 percent are sentenced to a term of imprisonment,” with the average time served about twice what it was in 1983.

Slashing sentences

Reducing the federal prison population requires undoing the policies that have put more people behind bars in world history while doing little to affect actual rates of drug use. “The most effective way to reduce overcrowding,” according to the report, “is to lower mandatory minimums for drugs, which, alone, would reduce overcrowding to the lowest it has been in decades.”

Indeed, “Reducing the number of drug offenders is the quickest way to yield an impact on both population and cost,” says the report. “In 10 years, reducing certain drug mandatory minimums by half would save $2.485 billion and reduce prison crowding to 20 percent above capacity.”

There is actually some political support for that. In 2010, Congress passed the “Fair Sentencing Act,” which reduced – but did not eliminate – the disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine offenses compared to powder cocaine. Though crack and powder cocaine are chemically identical, possessing 1 gram of crack used to be treated exactly the same as possessing 100 grams of powder cocaine, whose users are generally more white and affluent than users of crack. The act, passed with the support of all but one member of Congress, cut that disparity to 18 to 1.

The report argues one way to reduce overcrowding in federal prisons is to make that reform retroactive: there are more than 3,000 people behind bars who would not be there had they been sentenced under the 2010 guidelines. Conservatively, releasing them would “lead to savings of $229 million over 10 years,” according to the report. Like other federal inmates, those drug offenders are currently ineligible for parole, another policy the Urban Institute says should change.

“Even with a mix of reforms, federal prisons may continue to be overcrowded,” says the report. “But a smart combination of policies will save taxpayers billions, make prisons less dangerous, and improve the quality and reach of programs designed to keep inmates from offending again.”

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The outlet that was to publish this piece ran out of money mid-week in case you're feeling generous and would like to provide me a form of validation that can be exchanged for goods and services.

It can't happen here

The year is 2036. Packs of feral dogs roam the streets of Denver, scouring the destitute downtown for their next meal: probably some poor vagrant bastard, if Those Who Dwell Below haven't beat them to it. A lone scream in the distance pierces the eery silence.

"What happened here?" a young girl asks her father, scanning the hellscape. "Where did all the people go?"

Nothing.

The father turns a dial on the hovercraft, appearing to have not heard the question, his face expressionless. As he brings the vessel to a stop, he takes a deep breath, sighing as he wipes the sweat from his brow. How to explain?

"They -- they legalized marijuana," he says flatly, pressing his temples. "Reefer, Annie. The bloody fools!"

The West goes to pot

In my latest piece for Al Jazeera, I recount how a trip to a Hollywood plastic surgeon led to me embracing alternative medicine and Adult Swim. Check it out.

Police dogs as divining rods

(This piece was originally posted at the BrandX blog.)

A local couple has been murdered in their own home. You, a respected officer of the law, are responsible for tracking down their killer. But leads are short and public pressure to solve the case is building by the day. Your career’s on the line here. What do you do?

If you were a cop in 17th century France, the answer would have been: find a guy with a magic stick. Indeed, in 1692 French police enlisted a peasant named Jacques Aymar-Vernay in the search for the perpetrator of a double homicide. And it paid off. Aymar-Vernay, who had gained a national reputation for his claimed ability to use a y-shaped stick, a “divining rod,” to locate sources of water, claimed his divine branch had fingered a 19-year-old man with a hunchback as the killer. The man was tortured to death.

A few years later, not surprisingly, Aymar-Vernay was outed as a fraud.

Today, we laugh at our primitive ancestors and their naive belief that a divining rod -- shown by study after study to be no more reliable than chance -- could actually be used to track down criminals. But the joke’s on us: we’re still using those magic sticks, except now they have four legs and are covered in fur.

In last week’s episode, we highlighted one case out of Virginia where the reliability of a drug-sniffing dog named “Bono” was called into question after it was found that, of the 85 times the dog had signaled there were drugs in a vehicle, drugs were only found 22 times. What we soon figured out, though, is that it wasn’t the fault of poor Bono but his human handlers, just as it wasn’t the stick that was at fault for sending a French hunchback to his death.

As researchers at UC Davis observed, police dogs will often signal that there are drugs in a car not because there are, but because that’s what they think their handlers want. And that leads to a lot of false positives. In Australia, one analysis found drug-sniffing dogs (or rather, their handlers) got it wrong 80 percent of the time. And the Chicago Tribune found that police dogs were wrong in 56 percent of the cases it analyzed -- and in 73 percent of cases involving Hispanic drivers, indicating that the dogs are being used to rationalize racial profiling in the war on drugs.

But that hasn’t stopped the police from relying on dogs for a simple reason: like the divining rod of old, the dogs lend a pseudo-scientific rationale to whatever it is one wants to do, be it finding a suspect to pin a murder upon or allowing one probable cause to search a vehicle. Indeed, in the “Bono” case a judge ruled that it didn’t matter the dog was wrong 74 percent of the time, according to one news account, because of “other factors, including the dog’s training and flawless performance during re-certification sessions” -- and, presumably, because ruling the other way would mean throwing out a whole lot of other cases. And we wouldn’t want something as silly as scientific evidence to get in the way of a conviction, no matter the century.

Nicaragua's 'revolutionary' war on drugs

Rivas, Nicaragua - Ravished by violent drug trafficking organisations flush with prohibition profits, Central America is now one of the deadliest places on Earth, with Honduras experiencing even more murders per capita than Iraq. That's led some politicians to start talking about something they never would have considered just a decade ago, at least publicly: breaking with the militarised, literal war on drugs favoured by the United States in favour of decriminalisation - and perhaps even outright legalisation. But contrary to what one might assume, it's not the "anti-American" leftists leading the charge, but the reliably pro-American heads of the region's center-right governments.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera.

U.S. Attorneys take on Big Pharma

In no uncertain terms, U.S. federal attorneys in California are blasting the corporatist health care system and the mega-corporations behind it that are every day placing profits over people.

Benjamin Wagner, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, for instance, denounced "Large commercial operations" that "cloak their moneymaking activities in the guise of helping sick people when in fact they are helping themselves." Laura Duffy, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, was equally forceful, declaring that the medical "industry is not about providing medicine to the sick. It's a pervasive for-profit industry."

What turned a bunch of lawyers for the Obama administration into radical leftists adopting rhetoric that wouldn't be out of place at the Occupy Wall Street protest? Pot. As Reason's Jacob Sullum notes, they weren't talking about the medical industry writ large, or the major pharmaceutical and insurance companies that stand to gain from the health care law their boss, President Obama, signed into law in 2010, but rather California's medical marijuana industry.

Turning a profit is immoral, you see, when it threatens the profits of more politically connected players in the drug industry: the likes of Merck and the Miller Brewing Company.

Lies, damn lies, and drug war statistics

Anti-marijuana campaigners hate the fact that in some states in the U.S. sick people are allowed to use a drug that doesn't come from a big pharmaceutical company, which they fear could eventually lead to a broader relaxation of cannabis laws. But they can't really just say that they'd prefer your grandma to spend all day vomiting up her cancer drugs, so they, predictably, point to the children.

As the Contra Costa Times reports, prohibitionists in California are claiming "relaxed state laws toward medical marijuana" are responsible for an overall increase in the use of pot.

"In evaluating the statistics, it shows states that have a medical-marijuana program have a significant increase in use of those who are using marijuana," said Paul Chabot, founder of Rancho Cucamonga-based Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition.

What follows is a bunch of statistics showing marijuana use is slightly up, not just in California, but around the country. Nowhere is their statistical evidence that "states that have a medical-marijuana program" experienced larger increases, as implied by the noble and not at all self-interested Mr. Chabot.

So, what do the statistics actually say? California's had legal medical marijuana for about 15 years now, so somebody has to have studied the issue. Let's see what we can find on the website of the U.S. government's National Institute of Health, shall we?

"Do medical cannabis laws encourage cannabis use?" That sounds promising. Published in 2007, the study was conducted by researchers at Texas A&M's Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics. And what did it find?

No statistically significant pre-law versus post-law differences were found . . . . Thus, consistent with other studies of the liberalization of cannabis laws, medical cannabis laws do not appear to increase use of the drug. One reason for this might be that relatively few individuals are registered medical cannabis patients or caregivers. In addition, use of the drug by those already sick might "de-glamorise" it and thereby do little to encourage use among others.

Meanwhile, Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project notes that a recent federal survey of teen cannabis use found that in states like California "rates actually decreased since the implementation of their medical marijuana programs."

So just who is this Paul Chabot guy anyway and why is he so invested in making factually flawed arguments against liberalized drug laws? It's interesting, actually. From his official bio on the website of the Coalition for a Drug Free California, we find that he is:

a combat veteran from Iraq [sic] where he served as an intelligence officer with special operations forces. Having fought to defend America's values and principles, he returned home to find California falling further down a slippery slope of drug legalization, addiction, crime and violence. At the early age of 12 Paul entered drug rehab for alcohol and marijuana addiction, and has to date achieved 25 years of sobriety. He served as a police officer, a parole board commissioner and a White House Senior Advisor for law enforcement, justice and drug control, followed by assignments with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the State Department. As a professional speaker, he has traveled to 48 states to speak on the perils of substance abuse.

Chabot is also a failed Republican candidate for California's State Assembly, his 2010 campaign based on the rallying cry of "Send a Military and Law Enforcement Veteran to Fight for You in Sacramento." The Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition that he is credited as founding, meanwhile, is according to its website composed of, among others: "Law Enforcement"; "Healthcare Professionals, including mental health and substance abuse"; and "Government agencies."

In other words, Chabot's career, like the careers of other prohibitionists, is dependent on maintaining the drug war status quo. Oh, he may believe the stuff he says; he may be a true believer. But then, money and power have a strange way of affecting people's thinking. The simple, indisputable fact is the institutions Chabot served, and the groups that now fund his anti-pot campaigning -- law enforcement and drug rehab profiteers -- depend on a system of fines, jail time and mandatory treatment for marijuana use.

Don't accuse me of being surprised this isn't the case, but it'd sure be nice if journalists noted the personal and financial interests anti-marijuana campaigners have in maintaining draconian drug laws. Or maybe they could just fact check the things they say before printing them.

'The Narco-Terror War'

My latest piece on the establishment right's call to ramp up the war on drugs -- dutifully answered by the Obama administration -- is now up over at the Institute for Policy Studies' Right Web. Check it out.

Profiting from pot (prohibition)

In a small victory for a slightly more humane and sensible drug policy, Connecticut lawmakers recently approved a measure decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. State Sen. Toni Boucher, a Republican, isn't happy, though. And she says that, rather than simply having honest disagreements on the best approach to dealing with pot, that Gov. Dannel Malloy has a "personal interest" in decriminalization: his son has been arrested for marijuana.

Boucher may have a point. When people in a position of power do something that's not entirely awful, such as reduce penalties for possessing certain taboo plants, it's often because they have been personally affected by the awful status quo. Disgraced San Diego Congressman Duke Cunningham, for instance, once a staunch advocate of "law and order," is now a vocal advocate of prison reform -- from his prison cell.

But what of the "personal interest" some have in maintaining the status quo? According to Sen. Boucher, she came to oppose reforming Connecticut's marijuana laws after talking with (wait for it):

"a variety of people who work in drug treatment facilities, medical centers and police departments—'people that have to deal with the after-effects' of the drug."

In other words, Boucher allegedly reached her anti-reform position after speaking with those who directly profit from a system that incarcerates and/or mandates treatment for those who consume marijuana. But it's those whose "personal interest" in the reform debate derives from their firsthand experience with the injustice of the criminal justice system that's supposed to shock and scandalize.

'If they're gonna use it, they're gonna use it.'

Colorado cop and DARE officer Vern Rucker probably didn't set out to undercut the stated purpose for the war on drugs when he spoke to the reporter for the Cortez Journal, a paper located in a small town in the southwestern part of the state. But that's just what Rucker did, thoroughly undermining one of the key rationales for the war when asked what effect the presence of licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in Cortez would have on rates of usage among Our Most Precious Natural Resource, the damned kids:

"I don't think (the presence of medical marijuana dispensaries) has anything to do with it," he said. "If they're gonna use it, they're gonna use it. They don't have to have a card. They just go get it."

Exactly. On behalf of drug legalization advocates the world over: thanks for making our case, Officer Rucker!  Now here's an organization you might be interested in.

In defense of Rand Paul (no, seriously)

Democratic candidate for Senate Jack Conway (right) draws a police officer's attention to a group of pot-smoking hippies in need of incarceration.

Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Kentucky, is a Very Reasonable Liberal running against the crazy, kooky Republican nominee Rand Paul. Being sensible and mainstream, Conway -- who as attorney general has overseen a state prison population that has grown 45 percent over the last decade, one of the fastest rate's in the nation -- believes the best solution to the "problem" of people who prefer smoking a joint to drinking Kentucky bourbon is imprisonment. As I said, he's a very reasonable man.

As the sensible one in the race -- did I mention Rand Paul once, OMG!#!EXTREMIST!!, smoked pot and engaged in stupid pranks while in college? -- Conway has gone on the attack against his opponent for outrageously suggesting that maybe, you know, the whole federal war on drugs thing has been a huge waste of money (editor's note: and lives).

"Rand will handcuff local sheriffs trying to combat the drug epidemic, and I will make sure Kentucky's law enforcement has the tools they need to protect our families," Conway said in response to Paul's proposal to cut federal aid to state drug enforcement programs, according to a humorously slanted, drug-traffickers-will-rape-your-blonde-haired-and-blue-eyed-children account from the AP. "That's my record as attorney general, and that's what I'll do in Washington."

Now, if Paul really was proposing to handcuff local sheriffs, I might actually consider breaking my whole no-voting thing and becoming a Kentucky Tea Party activist. What he is suggesting, though, is only that "issues like drug use and abuse are best dealt with at the local level." Scary.

Of course, Paul has plenty of actually silly and stupid ideas, having enjoyed The Fountainhead a bit too much as a young man, and has said a number of actually silly and stupid things -- like arguing oil giant and global asshole BP was somehow being unfairly treated in the wake of its destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. He also rather, uh, inarticulately defended his philosophical opposition to a piece of 1960s-era civil rights legislation, to put it mildly.

What's interesting, though, is that Paul has been called a no-good dirty racist for opposing a law that has absolutely no chance of going anywhere while his opponent, Jack Conway, has been lauded by all Right Thinking progressives even as he demagogically defends a federal war on drugs that has led the U.S. to have the largest prison population in the history of the world -- disproportionately affecting Hispanics and African-Americans, who are jailed at a rate roughly twice that of whites.

Rand Paul may be a racist, I don't really know, but it's his Democratic opponent who is grandstanding on behalf of a policy that is actually racist in its implementation. If only the professional left got as angry about that as they do about fucking Aqua Buddha.

Image courtesy of the Conway campaign.

UPDATE: Just to make this abundantly clear: Rand Paul is still a total prick, as evidenced by his recent statement that he opposes the legalization of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes. My intention was merely to point out that his ostensibly more liberal opponent viciously attacked him over his opposition to federal funding for the drug war in the silliest fashion possible, and that Democratic partisans who had attacked Paul as a racist have said nothing about his opponent's outspoken support for -- and background enforcing as attorney general -- a policy that disproportionately impacts minorities.

Another broken promise, another broken life

So Obama isn't going to end the war in Afghanistan, close Guantanamo Bay or reverse the Bush administration's policies on "enemy combatants." Meanwhile, he's supporting a corporatist health care reform package that would maintain the employer-insurance tie -- a work-or-die incentive in keeping with the US's founding Protestant work ethic -- and, rather than removing such state privileges for the insurance industry, would further increase them in the form of a new mandate that all Americans by their product. But while that whole "change" thing has yet to appear on most fronts, there is one area where President Obama's policy is in line with Candidate Obama's rhetoric: medical marijuana, with Attorney General Eric Holder promising to end federal raids on suppliers and patients who comply with state law, a welcome departure from the Bush administration's open disdain for the right of consenting adults to use medicines not manufactured by major pharmaceutical companies and the will of voters in 14 states and the District of Colombia.

Fooled ya! As The Denver Post reports:

Federal drug-enforcement agents Friday raided the home of a Highlands Ranch man who a day earlier bragged in a 9News report about the large and profitable medical-marijuana-growing operation in his basement.

Someone making a profit selling a drug? Oh dear, someone grab the smelling salts! Unless your name's Glaxo, Smith or Klein, the DEA won't be having any of that, hippie, despite the fact that, as stated by the Colorado government (pdf), "There are no regulations regarding dispensaries." And under the ballot initiative overwhelmingly approved by Colorado voters a decade ago, patients are allowed to specify caretakers to grow marijuana for them, so there's a clear reason why state law enforcement did not arrest this man first: he wasn't violating any state laws.

The DEA, however, isn't pretending this raid had anything to with a violation of state law, ostensibly the only reason the Obama administration would permit the agency to conduct one. No, it had to do with maintaing the supremacy of the central government, and signaling to we mere citizens that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC, not us peons leading our peaceful, productive lives, will decide what substances may or may not be put into our bodies:

Along with the raid, Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge of the Denver office, sent a message to anyone involved in Colorado's increasingly profitable medical-marijuana industry.

"It's still a violation of federal law," Sweetin said. "It's not medicine. We're still going to continue to investigate and arrest people."

Though you seem like a charming guy, special agent Sweetin, I must ask: what medical school did you go to? The medical value of marijuana is actually besides the point, though. The more fundamental question is, what entitles someone with a uniform and a badge to use the threat of force to dictate what another human being, another soul who entered this world ignorant and naked, may do, so long as their behavior is consensual and respectful of the equal right of others to experience the same freedom? And on a practical, cost-benefit level, isn't locking up and ruining the life of some pot dealer -- and taxing his neighbors to keep him locked up -- causing greater harm to society than if said dealer had been free to, horror of horrors, continue selling an herb that has never killed anyone to other consenting adults?

I don't expect a DEA agent or any defender of the drug policy status quo to answer that question satisfactorily because I suspect many, like agency chief Michelle Leonhart, aren't too concerned with the moral and philosophical problems with their line of work, instead getting off on the visceral thrill of busting down doors and cracking skulls and acting all special agent like, to which I say: grow up or get an Xbox.

The war on those happier than Indiana congressmen

Despite billions of dollars spent and millions of lives destroyed, the decades-long war on drugs has failed to have any discernible impact on drug use in the United States. While locking up drug users may benefit the prison industry -- nearly a million Americans have been arrested for drug offenses this year alone -- it's increasingly obvious the prohibition approach is no more likely to work with marijuana and cocaine than it did with alcohol.

Yet modern day prohibitionists persist on, like Republican Congressman Mark Kirk of Indiana, who is bravely crusading against the menace of good pot. In a press release, Kirk reports that "Kush users" -- that is, those who smoke pot containing 15% or more of THC -- "are 'zombie-like'", according to local law enforcement, "because of the extreme THC levels." This is of course a reason to jail them.

Though Kirk concedes "longer sentences aren’t the total solution to our nation’s drug problem" -- how progressive of him -- he concludes they'll do for now, arguing in typical myopic drug warrior fashion, "If you can make as much money selling pot as cocaine, you should face the same penalties."

The sin of selling good pot could get one 25 years in prison for a first-time offense if Kirk's legislation is enacted, which fortunately it most certainly will not be. The righteously wrongheaded puritanical zeal behind the bill is noteworthy, however, as the great journalist H.L. Mencken nailed more than 80 years ago in his book, Notes on Democracy, the especially cruel, crusading personality that motivates the sort of b-list Republican congressmen like Kirk to fight on in the face of obvious failure:

But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact [of their failure] frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes -- that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents. The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate -- which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are. They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.

One thing that always amuses me is that the National Press Club has a room named after this Mencken guy. I'm pretty sure he'd write something particularly scathing about that fact were he alive today.

"Institutionalized Injustice"

. . . that's the term former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper applis mandatory minimum sentencing, but it could equally apply to the entire war on drugs -- a war Stamper has become a forceful and eloquent opponent of since retiring from law enforcement. Speaking with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman this morning, Stamper did not merely call for a greater focus on "harm reduction" or other half-measures designed to put a kinder, gentler face on the drug war, but struck at the root of the problem -- and laid out a simple solution:

I actually support the legalization of all drugs. And in fact, the more dangerous or sinister or sensationally reported the experience of certain drugs, the greater the justification for the government, as opposed to drug cartels and street traffickers, to regulate that commerce. There’s been more harm done by the drug war than good. We have spent a trillion dollars prosecuting that war since Richard Nixon proclaimed drugs public enemy number one and declared all-out war on them.

And what do we have to show for it? While rates can fluctuate, drugs are more readily available today at lower prices and higher levels of potency than ever before. So it’s a colossal failure. And the only way to put these cartels out of business and to restore health and safety to our neighborhoods is to regulate that commerce as opposed to prohibiting it.

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview for similarly blunt statements about the U.S.'s disastrous and destructive drug war. Also check out Stamper's response to President Obama's smirking dismissal of marijuana legalization over at the Huffington Post.

More of the same from the agent of change

Back when he was still a candidate seeking to capitalize on liberal outrage over the Bush administration's raids on medical marijuana facilities and arrests of cancer patients for the sin of smoking pot and inhaling, Barack Obama had this to say:

I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources.

Asked later in the campaign pointblank whether he would put a stop to the federal raids on voter-approved medical marijuana dispensaries in states like California, Obama declared:

I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism.

And just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said respecting state pot laws was "now American policy", leading the credulous The New York Times to procaim: "Obama Administration to Stop Raids on Medical Marijuana Dispensers".

You know where this is headed . . .

Feds raid S.F. medical marijuana dispensary
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO—A medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco that gave out free marijuana to poor people is mostly empty after a raid by federal agents.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic Wednesday afternoon.

Agents loaded up several pickup trucks parked outside as they carried out marijuana plants, grow lights and other equipment.

Saying the specific reason for the raid is under court seal, the DEA would only say the dispensary is suspected of violating federal and state law.

Perhaps Obama will really end the federal raids during his second term, when he plans on implementing all those great progressive policies many of his supporters are convinced he believes in. Indeed, maybe he'll end the raids right after he brings the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and ends the use of warrantless spying and rendition.

My suggestion for those hoping for more sane drug laws in the U.S.? Don't hold your breath.

Legalize it

The U.S.-led war on drugs has been a colossal failure, a senior U.S. official said last week. And while numerous administrations have sunk tens of billions of dollars into the effort to combat illegal drugs, “we have gotten nothing out of it, nothing.”

Refreshing honesty from the Obama administration’s newly appointed “drug czar”? If only. Rather, the words in question are those of Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who was speaking more narrowly of the efforts to eradicate opium production in one of America’s colonial possessions (no, that one).

But while Holbrooke’s remarks were focused on solving the U.S.’s imperial dilemma in Afghanistan, they could just as easily apply to the entire model of the drug war -- a war which has led the land of the free to become the land of the incarcerated, with more than 7 million Americans either imprisoned or on parole, many because of the laws the current vice president helped enact during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

But attempts to combat illegal drug production with law enforcement and military force have failed, Holbrooke noted, with efforts to crack down on opium cultivation in hopes of cutting a key source of funding for the Taliban having not hurt the fundamentalist militia “one iota, because whatever money they're getting from the drugs trade, they get whatever they need whether we reduce the acreage or not." In sum, “it is the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years." Indeed, the BBC points out that despite poppy cultivation allegedly being reduced 19% last year, Afghanistan is still the source of 90% of the world's heroin supply.

Meanwhile, here in the United States government officials are as oblivious as ever, plowing ahead with their efforts to ramp up the drug war, both within the U.S.’s borders but also in neighboring Mexico, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates promising increased military cooperation and joint exercises with the U.S.’s southern neighbor.

Just this week, the Obama administration announced a massive new effort (read: futile) to stem the flow of illicit drugs from Mexico, while also aiding the Calderón government in its militaristic and demonstratively counterproductive approach to taking on the drug trade. But any plan that seeks to curb the supply of illicit drugs is bound to fail so long as there remains demand, as any limits on supply will only increase the street costs of the drug -- and the profits to be made selling it -- thus ensuring there will be an endless supply of would-be dealers attracted by the prospect of astronomical earnings, whatever the risks.

To get a glimpse of the scope of the "new" plan -- which represents as much fresh thinking as a Jerry Bruckheimer production -- consider Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano's remarks at the press conference announcing it:

First, we are doubling the number of law-enforcement personnel that are working in border enforcement teams . . . . We are also strengthening Operation Armas Cruzadas. . . We are tripling the number of Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysts located on the southwest border. . . . We are increasing . . . . We will be increasing . . . . We are doubling . . . . We're quadrupling . . . We are bolstering technology and resources . . . . We are embarking on increased screening . . . . We are moving mobile x-ray units to the border . . . . We are moving today a hundred more CBP personnel to the border . . . We are moving three mobile response teams . . . . etc.

In late 2007, I wrote about the Bush administration’s proposed Mérida Initiative for Inter Press Service -- including the opposition to it from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, on the other hand, made clear that the new administration remains committed to the program, under which “we are investing $700 million this year to work in collaboration with Mexico on law enforcement and judicial capacity.”

With President Obama showing no signs of backing away from the U.S commitment to the war on drugs in Latin America and beyond (having openly campaigned on stepping up said war), he appears set to follow in the footsteps of every president since Richard Nixon in pursuing a militarized approach to combatting the use of substances not sanctioned by the U.S. government. He should expect the same results.

Obama and McCain on Latin America

While I never got around to dissecting Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (short take: a whole lot of talk about "change" and "hope", with the same -- albeit well-delivered -- proposals for U.S. intervention around the globe), I did spend this past weekend analyzing how an Obama or John McCain administration would deal with Latin America.

The bottom line? Neither candidate promises much of a change, as I note in this piece for Inter Press Service:

WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (IPS) - With an election to replace an immensely unpopular president just weeks away, Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama have both sought to distance themselves from the record of George W. Bush -- but when it comes to Latin America, neither candidate promises a major break with the policies of the last eight years.

From maintaining the embargo against Cuba to expanding efforts to fight the war on drugs in Mexico and Colombia, McCain and Obama support most aspects of current U.S. policy toward Latin America. Indeed, outside of their shared pledge to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, there is little to suggest that either candidate would overhaul the Bush administration's approach to the region.

Read the rest here. The article is also available at CommonDreams.

Give that man a medal!

The Associated Press reports:

LIMA, OH (AP) -- A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.

The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty on misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.

Chavalia shot and killed Tarika Wilson and injured her year-old son who she was holding while SWAT officers stormed her house in January looking for her boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.

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Prosecutors said Chavalia, walking up a stairway in the house, recklessly fired into a bedroom where Wilson was with her six children. Her son, Sincere Wilson, was hit in the shoulder and hand. One of the boy's fingers was later amputated.

He fired three times at her even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon, said Prosecutor Jeffrey Strausbaugh.

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Defense attorney Bill Kluge told jurors Monday that Chavalia should not be judged on what wasn't known until after shooting, including the fact that Wilson did not have a gun or pose a threat.

"It's Monday morning quarterbacking," he told jurors. "Put yourself in Joe's shoes that night."

The jury's decision, he said in closing statements, will affect officers across Ohio.

"What kind of world would it be if we didn't have police officers," Kluge said. "Joe was doing his duty."

Right. Pointing out that a woman who posed no threat was senselessly murdered is "Monday morning quarterbacking." I can't help but think of the line from Monty Python's Holy Grail, after John Cleese's character has killed dozens of people for no apparent reason: "let's not argue and bicker over who killed who..."

As for what would a world without police officers like Joe Chavalia would be like? I'm not sure -- but at least a 26 year old mother would be alive to see it.

How the system works

This week's installment of "how having a shiny badge elevates you above the mere peons who pay your salary" is brought to you courtesy of the Minneapolis police department:

A Minneapolis family is outraged that members of the SWAT team that mistakenly raided their house and fired upon them last December have been awarded medals for their bravery under fire.

Vang Khang and his family had the fright of a lifetime when they believed their home was being invaded by burglars, or worse. It was actually a SWAT team, conducting a high-risk search warrant -- on the wrong house.

Acting on tips from a gang informant, police forced their way into the North Minneapolis home in the early morning of December 16 and traded fire with a terrified Khang, police said.
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On Monday, Police chief Tim Dolan awarded all eight SWAT team members medals for "bravery in action under fire," police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia told ABCNews.com.

Based on information given from the unnamed former gang member, police had successfully raided three other houses earlier that evening, resulting in multiple arrests of gang members and the discovery of illegal drugs and weapons, Garcia said.

According to Garcia, the informant claimed to have lived in the final residence, Khang's home, with many high-level gang members.

"We had the right house and right address -- according to what the informant told us -- but it's unclear why she gave that address, since the family had no ties whatsoever to the gang," Garcia explained.

According to Heffelfinger, the Laotian family has owned and lived in the house for four years and had no knowledge of the female police informant. "Ironically, the house is located across the street from a police precinct," Heffelfinger said, "so, if [the SWAT team] had simply asked the precinct, they would have learned the family was not gang bangers."

"They were acting in good faith on a warrant that was properly drawn up, based off of what appeared to be good information," Garcia said. "Their bravery under fire should not be negated [because of the misinformation]."

Terrorize an innocent family? Here's a medal! Call it the U.S. government's way of covering up incompetence by simply calling it valor.

Case in point: President Bush awarding former CIA director George Tenet a "Presidential Medal of Freedom" for his part in selling an illegal war of aggression to the American public.

At least in the case of the Minnesota family, no one died as a result of the police's actions. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Bush or Tenet.

The Merida Initiative

My latest piece for Inter Press Service regarding the Bush administration's so-called "Merida Initiative" -- a three-year plan to further the "war on drugs" in Mexico and several other Central American countries through military training and equipment -- is now available online.

An excerpt:

WASHINGTON, May 19 (IPS) - Funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may be temporarily stalled in the U.S. Congress, but last week lawmakers here did approve 400 million dollars in spending for another controversial war, this one aimed primarily at cutting off the transport of illicit drugs from Latin America into the United States.

Read the rest (subscription required).