A masters degree in marijuana

By Libby

Well, the political news is so toxic today that I need a break for a moment and this new higher ed program is just the remedy.

Welcome to Oaksterdam University, a new trade school where "higher" education takes on a whole new meaning.

The school prepares people for jobs in California's thriving medical marijuana industry. For $200 and the cost of two required textbooks, students learn how to cultivate and cook with cannabis, study which strains of pot are best for certain ailments, and are instructed in the legalities of a business that is against the law in the eyes of the federal government.

''My basic idea is to try to professionalize the industry and have it taken seriously as a real industry, just like beer and distilling hard alcohol,'' said Richard Lee, 45, an activist and pot-dispensary owner who founded the school in a downtown storefront last fall.

This is how legalized marijuana could jumpstart an ailing economy. All sorts of new enterprises would develop, almost overnight. They would be hiring Americans -- you can't outsource agriculture -- and there's room for advancement. The article notes entry level jobs paye little more than minimum wage but a master trimmer can make fifty grand a year.

On a related note, regular commenter Rainbow Demon unearthed this study -- U.S. Hemp Ban Hurts Environment, Economy

Los Angeles (March 13, 2008) - With oil hitting $110 a barrel and gas prices creeping towards $4 a gallon, the federal government continues to prohibit U.S. farmers from growing hemp, which could be used to efficiently produce biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol.

Hemp is also a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly substitute for polyester, cotton, fiberglass and concrete, according to a new Reason Foundation study that examines hemp's potential uses and the ways other countries are benefitting from it. Industrial hemp production is banned in the U.S. as an archaic consequence of the war on drugs.

Hemp, even more so than marijuana could provide employment and badly needed tax revenue and there are at least hundreds of small farmers just waiting for our government to come to its senses and legalize this non-narcotic industrial crop so they can jump into the industry. We're the last major country in the world that maintains a ban on its cultivation simply to protect the interests of the prohibitionists and corporate interests that would face competition for their inferior products in a truly free market.

Barney Frank will push to legalize marijuana

By Libby

I've been meaning to get to this one all weekend. Nicole Bell flags a story on Barney Frank's excellent intentions.

“I’m going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Maher.

“I finally got to the point where I think I can get away with it,” he said.

Frank said he thinks “its time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public. The notion that you lock people up for smoking marijuana is pretty silly.”

Nicole thinks it won't go anywhere.

I am totally for legalization of marijuana, but I have to differ with Frank on this: to think that at this time with this administration that you could get away with a bill legalizing pot actually is what sounds silly.

I'd agree with her that the chances are slim to none of such a bill getting to the floor, much less passing in an election year, but in terms of Frank's personal strategy, it makes complete sense.

Barney is a long time advocate for marijuana policy reform and there is a large constituency in MA that supports legalization, or at least decrim. Further, marijuana reform is a hot issue in the Commonwealth this year. He has nothing to lose by bringing it forward and he will only endear himself further to an active and growing reform movement in the Commonwealth.

I don't know if he's facing any serious competition in a reelection bid, but he's smart to position himself to be able to tap into a well organized community of activists who will surely support his campaign. Besides, he's right. It is silly to be jailing tens of thousands of Americans for ingesting a natural herb.

Getting smart on drugs

By Libby

My friend and long time drug policy reformer Dean Becker was featured in a CBS Houston segment about prisons in Texas. It was well done and surprisingly pro-reform, which I think is a testament to the fine and relentless work of the Texas policy reform community. I especially liked this bit, quoting a local judge.

Consider this, of the 50,000-plus felony filings in Harris County courts last year, 20,500 were drug possession cases.

“Of the 20,500 cases, about 12,500 cases were for possession of less than one gram of penalty group one controlled substances: crack, heroine, meth,” the judge said.

Still more interesting: “Of that number, 7,500 were repeat offenders,” Judge Cosper said. “This was not their first time in the justice system, and there were actually 3,400 cases that involved people who had five or more felonies primarily for possession.”

That should lay to rest any doubts that the war on some drugs lies at the root of the prison overcrowding problem.

I agree with Dean that the best solution is to legalize drugs in order to control them in more than just name, but the piece goes on to examine the Star court alternative that sentences addicted offenders to treatment in lieu of jail. Considering the program has delivered good outcomes, meaning addicts who have kicked the habit and obtained gainful employment at half the cost of incarceration, you would think that our country could find the political will to at least redirect our energies in that direction. It would be a good start.

PKK Makes $700 Million Yearly From Drugs, Smuggling

By Cernig

The Turkish government has said that the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terror group has a yearly income of 400-500 million euros (up to $750 million) obtained from drug dealing, human trafficking, smuggling and donations.

Speaking on the second day of an international conference on terrorism organized by the Turkish military at the Centre of Excellence -- Defense against Terrorism (COE-DAT) in Ankara on March 10 and 11, Saygun said: “It is obvious that the PKK is a terrorist organization and, with its mafia-like structure, it is also an organized criminal organization. This fact has been proven by several international reports. The terrorists’ organization obtains its income mainly from drug dealing, in addition to arms smuggling, money laundering, racketeering and other illegal means.”
He said the PKK obtains 200-250 million euros from drug dealing, 100-150 million from its various smuggling activities and 15-20 million from donations.

Saygun indicated that the PKK provides arms not only to its members but also to the terrorists of other organizations. He said this shows how the PKK has become an international criminal organization and that it underlines the need to fight the PKK’s crimes internationally. “The mentality that supports the terrorist organization should not forget that this organization controls 80 percent of the drug dealing in Europe and poisons the European public.”

At the conference Saygun said reports from the UN and other esteemed international organizations indicate that the PKK kidnaps children -- including girls -- in Europe to give them training in arms and ideology.

He complained that even though Turkey has been sensitive to make a distinction among groups and not to label everybody terrorists, some Europeans do not show the same understanding. “Some in Europe wrongly identify everybody of Kurdish origin with the PKK,” he said.

Speaking about the harm caused by terrorist organizations in general, Saygun said: “Terrorist organizations claim they represent ethnic groups or great belief groups. So they carry out their activities in the name of the ideologies of Islam, people’s independence, minority rights, Jihad, democratic rights and freedoms, thereby seeking legitimacy for their activities. We should not fall into this trap.”

Not just terrorists responsible for over 60,000 deaths but a massive criminal organistation which has done untold damage to lives throughout the Middle east and Europe. Yet the Bush administration has consistently soft-stepped and fence sat when it comes to the PKK, willing to trade their presence and activities for a quiet Kurdish North in Iraq these last five years.

One offshoot of this group - the PJK - is one that rightwing American extremists like Ken Timmerman cozy up to simply because it is seen as fighting the current Iranian regime. Timmerman isn't just the reporter who wrote a puff piece on the PJK, he's also executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which he founded with neocon Bush administration insider Peter Rodeman.

But both Bush administration and neocons alike should be careful about their allies. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" may well be the way the Right like to run foreign policy but it's just as true that "if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas."

The Wire on the drug war

By Libby

This article from the writers of The Wire reinforces my desire to get the DVD and watch the whole series from the beginning someday. It makes one of the best arguments against the war on some drugs that I've seen in a long time. Read it all, it's short, but I want highlight a couple of key quotes. First on the hidden costs of prosecuting this failed 'war.'

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.

This is of course in addition to the prison side of the equation where non-violent drug offenders languish in cells for years under draconian mandatory sentencing while violent criminals are let out on earlier releases to ease the crowding caused by drug war incarcerations. But I'm really impressed with their advocacy for jury nullification.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.

This unfortunately is easier said than done. Judges routinely wrongly instruct the jury that they don't have this right and attempt to weed out jurors who might try to invoke it during jury selection. I recall specific instances where single jurors who managed to get seated and tried to do so have been harassed and even punished. I even remember one instance where some people handing out instructional pamphlets outside of the courthouse were arrested for interfering in court business.

The key to making this strategy work is for more people to embrace it and to advocate for change of policy in the courtroom. Where a single juror can be targeted without much notice, several jurors standing together would not be so easily dismissed. If a movement developed to at least force judges to instruct jurors on this established right, the people would gain a meaningful tool to challenge wrongheaded laws.

The Good, the Bad and the Drug War

By Libby

I know a lot of people are terrified of this substance, and granted it is a bad drug, but trust me, this is good.

The new sentencing guidelines with reductions in crack cocaine sentences went into effect two days ago. In two days, the courts have granted 400 motions for sentence reductions. A few inmates have been able to leave jail immediately.

This is just a tiny step towards common sense sentencing. All it means is that some addict who got caught with a couple of grams of crystalized cocaine won't be spending the same amount of time in jail as the guy who got caught with an ounce or two of powder. The program should be expanded to include more offenders. It would minimally ease jail overcrowding at the very least.

On the other hand this is bad.

Tiny plastic bags used to sell small quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana and other drugs would be banned in Chicago, under a crackdown advanced Tuesday by a City Council committee.

Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) persuaded the Health Committee to ban possession of "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height or width," after picking up 15 of the bags on a recent Sunday afternoon stroll through a West Side park.

Health Committee Chairman Ed Smith (28th) said the ban is part of a desperate effort to stop what he called "the most destructive force" in Chicago neighborhoods.

"We need to use every measure that we possibly can to stop it because it is destroying our kids," he said.

They always justify these lamebrained measures as being "for the children" don't they? Any reasonably sane person understands that it's what is in the bags that is dangerous and banning them will simply cause the dealers to switch to different packaging. Meanwhile, some thrifty granny who saves those tiny bags that hold the extra buttons for her sweater because they might come in handy someday, faces a $1,500 fine when the SWAT team busts down her door by mistake.

Proving once again that prohibition addiction is the gateway to stupidity.

Democrats still draconian on drug laws

By Libby

My dream of a sensible drug policy in the next administration died a long time ago. As Jeralyn points out, both our leading Democratic hopefuls have godawful positions on drug war policy but she also posts some very good news.

Congress in January cut funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant by two-thirds, from $520 million to $170 million for fiscal 2008. Local agencies say that's a threat to the officers who do much of the law enforcement spadework.

These Byrne task forces are responsible for some of the most egregious miscarriages of justice and violations of civil rights such as Tulia, Texas. They're a waste of tax dollars and do little more than invite corruption by law enforcement. I'm sorry they didn't abolish them altogether but this was a really good step in the right direction.

Drugs and the presidency

By Libby

Funny how our worldview has changed in the last 15 years. Take for example, this NYT piece on Obama's youthful drug use. Bill Clinton was roundly mocked for minimizing his own dalliance with marijuana when he stated he "didn't inhale." Now Obama is under fire for overstating his own experiences with the drug culture, the implication apparently being that he is using his teenage experimentation as a tool to establish some kind of street cred -- or something.

Personally, I don't give a flying leap about anybody's past drug use. What I care about is their stance on the war on some drugs today. Hillary's position is about as abysmal as the GOP's embrace of another war they would like to last forever. Obama's is marginally better, that is when he's not revising his rhetoric to suit his audience. So far, it looks like my hope for a candidate who will endorse common sense drug policy remains a pipe dream.

Prison dependency

By Libby

One of the big reasons it's so difficult to generate the political will to end the war on some drugs is while we fill our prisons with addicts, our municipalities are addicted to prisons. Jeralyn has the specifics but here's some general numbers.

Some stats: The U.S. accounts for 5% of the world's population but is responsible for incarcerating 25% of the world's inmates. In the last 30 years of our get tough on crime policy, our state and federal prison population has jumped from 300,000 to 2.3 million.

The book examines who profits from our policies of mass imprisonment. The answer ranges from "investment banks that issues bonds for prison construction to the companies that staff and manage the prisons to the organizations that provide health care."

The book finds that $186 billion tax dollars a year "intended for the public good" goes to "private prison companies, churches, investment banks, guard unions and medical corporations."

Bottom line: 1 of every 137 Americans is in prison today. And we're paying for it.

I might also note that the price we pay for this comes at the cost of schools and firefighters and police, among other municipal services.

All across America, rural towns and even entire counties are dependent on the prisons for jobs, local business trade and government grants. They are going to fight tooth and nail against any common sense policies that would shut down that gravy train.

The obvious solution, since the prison population largely exploded on drug offenders would be for some prisons to be refurbished as treatment centers for addicts which would fill an huge unmet need, would probably provide pretty much the same economic stimulus and would have the added benefit of actually solving the problem of drug addiction. Unfortunately, I've noticed that people who have no trouble with the idea of addicts who are jonesing for a fix being locked up, and possibly escaping, within traveling distance of their homes, often object strenuously to the idea of addicts who are actively trying to kick the habit being 'free' anywhere near their community.

Drugs and weak states

B.J. at Northman's Fury is riffing off the same article as Libby in the expansion of opium production to central and southern Iraq. He makes a very good counter-insurgency point and the weakness of the state:

This will likely have some significant impact on the overall situation in Iraq, because that shiny counterinsurgency manual the Americans are so impressed with tends to get tossed out the window when the drug warriors get involved.

More to the point, whatever success the "surge" has had, it is more a measure of the Americans giving local warlords and militias control over their fiefdoms.....

So the US now gets to decide whether or not they wish to hold onto the fragile security gains the empowerment of these militias have given them while watching Iraqi opium production bloom forth....

The deals that the US has cut with the Sadrist ceasefire and the Sunni Arab tribal leadership and levies that have led to a decrease in violence have been at the expense of the concept of a strong, unified central Iraqi government. The Sunni Arab tribes have re-asserted their authority on local economic arrangements and their integration with the gray and black markets of the region and the world.

One of the central themes of both John Robb and Thomas Barnett is illicit and black market networks thrive in areas of weak to no state control. Hard, naturally derived, drugs are some of the most common markers of weak state control, as we know that Columbia has a minimal writ of legitimacy in the cocaine regimes, and Afghanistan has been beset by weak governments for my entire life and then some, and the former French Indochina opium triangle had minimal state influence for multiple generations. Are there any significant cocaine/opium producing regions that exist with reasonably strong governments?

Iraq the next narco-state?

By Libby

This was first reported back in May of last year but reporters were unable to get to sites in southern Iraq to confirm that poppy cultivation was beginning to take hold in Iraq. Today, Patrick Cockburn has a follow-up. It appears the initial reports were correct and the poppies are now showing up in new locations.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad. [...]

Just as in Afghanistan, the farmers are driven by simple economics and the beneficiaries who exploit their poverty are those who fight our troops.

The agency cites a local agricultural engineer identified as M S al-Azawi as saying that local farmers got no support from the government and could not compete with cheap imports of fruit and vegetables. The price of fertiliser and fuel has also risen sharply. Mr Azawi says: "The cultivation of opium is the likely solution [to these problems]."

Al-Qa'ida is in control of many of the newly established opium farms and has sometimes taken the land of farmers it has killed, said a local source. At Buhriz, American military forces destroyed the opium farm and drove off al-Qa'ida last year but it later returned. "No one can get inside the farm because it is heavily guarded," said the source, adding that the area devoted to opium in Diyala is still smaller than that in southern Iraq around Amara and Majar al-Kabir.

For all the talk about the 'success' of the surge, the day to day reality for Iraqis is one of deprivation and desperation. The most honest of men will turn to illegal pursuits when their family's welfare is at stake, which should surprise no one. Given the choice between feeding your children and breaking a law, what would you choose?

Furthermore, given the ongoing turmoil and lack of economic security in Iraq, we can expect to see this trend increase. This is good for the prohibitionists. They'll get another front in their war on some drugs. Good for drug cartels. One more source for their product. For the rest of us, not so great.

Marijuana is good medicine

By Libby

The prohibition profiteers lie to you when they tell you that pot has no medicinal value. A new study just out shows marijuana increases brain cell growth.

ST. JOHN’S, Nfld — Supporters of marijuana may finally have an excuse to smoke weed every day. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that smoking pot can make the brain grow.

Though most drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells, injections of a synthetic cannibinoid have had the opposite effect in mice in a study performed at the University of Saskatchewan. ...

The researchers found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis — the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. A current hypothesis suggests depression may be triggered when the hippocampus grows insufficient numbers of new brain cells. If true, HU-210 could offer a treatment for such mood disorders by stimulating this growth.

Now cannabis is a complex plant and the research was conducted with only two of a multitude of elements it contains so this study isn't really a license to smoke pot, but this could explain why so many people who suffer from depressive disorders self-medicate with marijuana. Taken in moderation, it works better than Zoloft with a lot less dangerous side effects.

Meanwhile, I have mixed feelings about this research. It's good to establish that cannabinoids are useful as medicine but the focus on using synthentic compounds suggests to me that prohibitionists want to profit from marijuana without having to give up their equally lucrative war on the natural plant. [via]

Another needless death in the WOsD

By Libby

In the old days, before forfeiture laws allowed every podunk PD in middle America to equip a SWAT team, the cops would probably have sent a couple of uniforms, or many some undercover officers to arrest their suspect on the street. Without all the cool toys, breaking down a door was an exception reserved for the most dangerous of criminals, rather than the first method of choice to bring in a low level dealer. Now that the courts have allowed police to profit from their raids, and furthermore condoned no knock-low knock break-ins, the enforcement tactics cause more harm to innocents than the crimes themselves.

Police in Lima, Ohio shot and killed Tarika Wilson, a mother of six, and seriously wounded her one-year-old son during a drug raid yesterday. Police say they were investigating Wilson’s boyfriend for drug distribution. They haven’t yet released why the police fired (though they have said police initially fired at two pit bulls). The fact that they aren’t saying so doesn’t bode well. When the suspect fires first in one of these cases, that fact is generally immediately released to the newspapers.

I'd also note that if they found some huge amount of drugs, that information would certainly have been released as well, so we can assume the suspect was not a major level dealer. But it's the mentality behind these raids that is truly frightening.

More disturbing, the police are saying they knew there were children in the home, yet went ahead a highly volatile, forced-entry drug raid, anyway. In fact…

Police Maj. Richard Shade, a former SWAT commander for the department, said it’s not unusual for children to be inside homes raided by police officers.

The prohibitionists like to tell you they're fighting to protect the children from drugs but who will protect them from such legalized thuggery? I'm betting watching their mother get killed and their infant sibling critically injured by the cops did much more damage to those six kids psyches in those few terrifying moments, than any exposure to drug consumption could have done over a lifetime.

First they came for the druggies, then they came for the activists

By Libby

This is something I meant to post about some time ago that slipped through the cracks. Via Kip Esquire, there's some disturbing provisions in a new copyright protection bill filed in Congress earlier in the month that should raise a red flag for bloggers.

Top Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday introduced a sweeping 69-page bill that ratchets up civil penalties for copyright infringement, boosts criminal enforcement, and even creates a new federal agency charged with bringing about a national and international copyright crackdown.
...

Any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime could be seized by the Justice Department and auctioned off. The proceeds would be funneled to the agency's budget. The process is called civil asset forfeiture, and typically the owner does not need to be found guilty of a crime for his property to be taken.

The bill is the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, or PRO IP (H.R. 4279). The civil forfeiture provisions are in Section 202, amending 18 U.S.C. 2318 (which already allows the government to seize counterfeit labels, packaging and documentation).

The bipartisan bill was drafted mainly in response to music and movie downloads but it's not difficult to imagine how it could be expanded to prosecute and indeed persecute, political activists who routinely post copyrighted material on their websites. This bill seems destined to muddy the waters of fair use and could easily be co-opted to shut down the free exchange of information on the internet.

If you think I'm overstating the concern, I'd remind you of how civil forfeiture has come to corrupt our law enforcement agents and has been routinely abused in drug busts. The law was originally enacted to deprive major drug dealers of ill gotten gains, but has since become a cash cow for our LEOs through abusive application of the law. I'd urge you to read point 5 here for a fine example of how easily the system can be perverted by greed.

I've long contended that civil forfeiture shouldn't even be legal. The police can seize property on mere suspicion. They do not need to prove an underlying crime prior to seizure of private assets. In fact, contrary to the basic premise of presumed innocence, the property is considered to be guilty until it proves itself innocent, at a cost so prohibitive that the owner will often not fight because the costs outweigh the value of the seized items. But the small seizures add up to millions in additional revenues for the LEOs.

To add to the concern over this bill, it would create a massive new bureaucracy.

Probably the most extensive part of the PRO IP Act is its creation of a new federal bureaucracy called the White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, or WHIPER. The head of WHIPER would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. WHIPER seems to be modeled after the U.S. Trade Representative, with the head of the new agency bearing the rank of "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary."

The job pays pretty well and the agency itself will depend on its future funding coming from the sales of seized computers. How long do you think it will take them to start expanding the scope of the "copyright crimes" to include the sharing of mainstream media coverage among activists? [h/t Vig and NYC Alberts]

One way to avoid the mortgage meltdown

By Libby

Atrios calls this creative financing.

Sheriff's Office narcotics detectives reported raiding three houses where hundreds of marijuana plants were being grown. [...]

The same group of people bought all the houses in 2005 and allegedly set up the grows, according to detectives. Investigators think the owners were using the marijuana grows to pay the mortgages on the homes.

"It appears they've been financing the houses with the cultivation and sales of marijuana," Carney said.

Makes sense to me. Unless you're a one percenter, all the big money is in the black market. Meanwhile, the PD just contributed to the housing crisis. There's three more that will going into default.

Clinton camp drops drugs on Obama - Updated

By Libby
Updated below

Fabulous. By all means, let's talk about drugs. I would love to see Clinton manage to drop the issue in Obama's lap. He could turn it into a positive by embracing a strong failure of prohibition stance.

I've been blogging about drug policy for close to five years now. I've talked to a lot of people, all across the political and social strata, and not one thought we were winning the war on some drugs. The vast majority, at this point in time, agree that the incarceration/interdiction model is not working and a treatment/public health approach is needed. The time is ripe to embrace drug policy reform.

This is a made for momentum issue. A courageous candidate could take this opportunity and use it to show leadership on a social issue the conventionally wise have missed. With millions of drug offenders in jail, the failed policies have now touched a critical mass of the citizenry. A major candidate willing to take a strong and sensible approach to reform could energize a large and well organized network of activists and NGOs in the anti-prohibition movement.

Does Obama have the guts to adopt a smart on drugs strategy and turn it his advantage? Who knows. But if I was him, I'd be calling Jack Cole and Ethan Nadelmann right now to get the talking points.

Update: Well, there goes that dream of making this a viable issue in the campaign. Clinton aide de camp, Bill Shaheen, is backing off on his remarks, and Obama isn't going to take my advice and run with it.

"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."

Newsflash Mr. Obama. This is an issue that matters to American people. What a disappointment.

99% wouldn't try legalized hard drugs -Updated

By Libby
Updated below by Fester and Libby

I was supposed to post this a week ago in honor of the anniversary of alcohol prohibition. Since I didn't manage to do that, I'll post it in honor of the thread at Balloon Juice where I spent my afternoon debating drug war policy instead. Either way, the information is timeless.

One of the biggest arguments against legalization of white powder drugs is this notion that there would be an explosion of experimentation and America would instantly turn into a zombie drug addict nation. Well this survey explodes that myth.

StoptheDrugWar.org today released polling results suggesting that drug prohibition's main supporting argument may be simply wrong. Drug policy reformers point to a wide range of demonstrated social harms created by the drug laws -- crime and violence, spread of infectious diseases, official corruption, easy funding for terrorist groups, to name a few -- while prohibitionists argue that use and addiction would explode if drugs were legalized. But is the prohibitionist assumption well-founded?

Zogby polling data released today asked 1,028 likely voters, "If hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine were legalized, would you be likely to use them?" Ninety-ninety percent of respondents answered, "No." Only 0.6 percent said "Yes." The remaining 0.4 percent weren't sure.

I would have answered no as well because I don't have any desire to use those drugs now. Why would I change my mind just because it's legal? Why would anybody?

UPDATEby Fester

One problem with polls is that they are very good at telling you what people want you to hear. Stated preferences/behavior do not have to match up with actual preferences/behavior. For instance, federal statistics gathered through other survey means indicate that roughly 1% of the population actively uses cocaine/crack, and about 1 in 7 has ever tried cocaine. Going through college and thinking about a couple of dorms in the two weeks before finals, that sounds about right to me.

Update by Libby: Point well taken Fester, and I'm not a huge believer in the reliability of polling but I certainly trust independent studies more than the self-serving propaganda coming out of the ONDCP. They have a nasty habit of firing contractors whose studies don't deliver the desired data to justify continuing their ineffective policies.

Common sense sentencing

By Libby

This appears to be very good news. SCOTUS blog is reporting that the high court upheld downward departures in cocaine sentencing. We'll have to wait for the usual legal eagles to dissect the finer points on this decision, but on its face, it would appear to mean that judges will now have much greater discretion in sentencing under the guidelines, which SCOTUS seems to have affirmed are not mandatory if I'm reading this correctly.

Meanwhile, Jeralyn reminds us that, "Tomorrow, the U.S. Sentencing Commission will announce its decision on whether its recent crack cocaine guideline reduction will be retroactive and thus apply to the 19,500 crack offenders now in federal prison." One can only hope the Commission will take this decision as a sign that it's politically safe to do so. The cocaine/crack disparity was enacted in a climate of disinformed panic and has survived for far too long.

The whack-a-mole war on some drugs

By Libby

Our US career prohibitionists have touted the success of their poppy eradication schemes in Afghanistan and in certain provinces, poppy production has indeed been all but eliminated. Afghanistan's dependence on the drug industry -- not so much. The impoverished farmers simply replaced poppies with pot.

Cannabis cultivation rose 40 percent in Afghanistan this year, to 173,000 acres from 123,550 in 2006, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its 2007 opium survey. The crop is being grown in at least 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the survey released last month. [...]

The U.N. said cannabis yields around twice the quantity of drug per acre as opium poppies and requires less investment. The U.N. drug report estimated farmers growing cannabis could earn the same amount per acre as opium farmers.

An earlier report on this story notes Balkh province "now has one of the most bounteous cannabis crops in the country."

The plant is certainly not hard to find. It lines the main highways leading into Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital, and is visible to passing drivers. The crop's chief byproduct, hashish, is sold openly at many roadside fruit and grocery stands, particularly around Balkh, the ancient citadel town about 24 kilometers, or 15 miles, west of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Afghani authorities concede they don't have a strategy to displace the crop and one assumes it won't be easy to form one considering the historical place the plant has in the local society.

Farmers in this region have cultivated cannabis for more than 70 years and, by the estimates of several Balkh residents, at least half the adult male population smokes hashish. Resinous, pungent and black, the hashish is sold in thin, palm-size sheets that resemble large tire patches and sell for about a dollar each. Hashish from this area - called Shirak-i-Mazar, or Milk of Mazar - was once prized by smokers around the world, though its primacy has since been supplanted by varieties from other countries.

I remember that hash well myself. There was a time in the 60s where it was easier to get than Mexican marijuana. Loved the stuff... But I digress. Unlike the slash and burn mentality of US prohibs, the Aghani officials are taking a more humane position on eradication.

Farmers have begun to harvest their current crop, and officials say they do not want to destroy the farmers' livelihood without giving them time to plant an alternative.

The leadership in Kabul recognizes that people have to eat and their poor farmers are left with no viable alternatives since neither the US, nor the greater international community, has stepped forward to offer assistance in developing markets for licit agricultural products or other legal sources of income.

Steven Taylor sums up the folly perfectly.

This one of those utterly classic stories that makes you wonder if one should laugh because it demonstrates the foibles of our drug war policies as well as the clear economic forces that we are trying to combat, or cry because if one knows that no effective lessons are likely to be learned by the drug warriors from the case.

I'm reduced to what my friend Jules calls mad laughter, myself.

McCain on drugs

By Libby

I received a note from my friends at LEAP pointing to me an exchange in New Hampshire between John McCain and Bradley Jardis, a NH police officer. It's clear that McCain doesn't get what's wrong with the drug war. Jardis asked this question.

"I've served here in my state as a law enforcement officer for going on 9 years now, and after nine years working the street, I've come to the conclusion that the War on Drugs is a terrible failure... I have seen firsthand that the War on Drugs causes crime, it causes children to have access to drugs easier, and it does nothing to curb the problem of drug abuse. Just like Alcohol Prohibition after the the 18th Amendment passed, the country wised up and we passed the 21st Amendment which curbed the violence problem in this country greatly. What is it going to take for powerful politicians such as yourself to realize that the War on Drugs is a failure and we need to... we need to get smart about drugs, not tough. We need to be smart."

McCain, to his credit noted that first time drug offenders should be put into treatment programs instead of jail, but then went on to repeat every false prohibitionist talking point from the gateway theory that one puff of marijana will lead to addiction to hard drugs to alleging that alternate policies in other countries have failed. In fact, most have succeeded in reducing addiction and related crime and saved money on law enforcement costs.

McCain doesn't seem to grasp that prohibition created the drug cartels and then tries to trip up Jardis with a gotcha question of his own, asking whether Jardis supports the legalization of meth. You can the full quote at the link, or watch the exchange on the video, but this is the part of Jardis' response that generated the most applause.

There's no doubt that drugs are dangerous, but our policy does not do anything to help people who are addicted. If you arrest a 16-year-old for possession of marijuana, and they get a criminal conviction, you can get over an addiction but you can never get over a conviction. They lose their funding to go to college, and no one could ever say that keeping a kid from going to college accomplishes something good. Not at all.

McCain tried to dodge addressing the failures of policy in the war on some drugs by evoking the boogeyman of meth, but that's like ignoring a diagnosis of cancer because the patient suffers from dandruff.

It's worth repeating -- you can get over an addiction but you can never get over a conviction. Until our political leaders grasp the simple concept that drug abuse is better treated as a public health issue rather than a law enforcement problem, our tax dollars will continue to be wasted on treating peripheral symptoms instead of curing the underlying disease and 'dumb on drugs' tactics will continue to infect our policy.