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Tag: war on drugs

  • From Amsterdam: Lessons on controlling drugs

    Hot off the virtual presses, here’s an article I wrote appearing in this coming Sunday’s Washington Post. I talk about the difference in policy and police attitudes toward drugs in Amsterdam and in the U.S.:

    In Amsterdam, the red-light district is the oldest and most notorious neighborhood. Two picturesque canals frame countless small pedestrian alleyways lined with legal prostitutes, bars, porn stores and coffee shops. In 2008, I visited the local police station and asked about the neighborhood’s problems. I laughed when I heard that dealers of fake drugs were the biggest police issue — but it’s true. If fake-drug dealers are the worst problem in the red-light district, clearly somebody is doing something right.

    and

    History provides some lessons. The 21st Amendment ending Prohibition did not force anybody to drink or any city to license saloons. In 1933, after the failure to ban alcohol, the feds simply got out of the game. Today, they should do the same — and last week the Justice Department took a very small step in the right direction.

    Read all about it!

  • The Curious Case of Barry McCaffrey

    General Barry McCaffrey was the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the “Drug Czar”) from 1996 to 2001.

    I can’t say much about his military career (1964-1996). I think it was just and honorable. He commanded a division in Operation Desert Storm and later the U.S. Southern Command. Wikipedia also says he created “the first Human Rights Council and Human Rights Code of Conduct for U.S. Military Joint Command.” Seems damned decent.

    But the Barry McCaffrey I know, the Clinton Drug Czar McCaffrey, is either a bald-faced liar or delusional. Until last night, I assumed the former. But when you talk to a man who steadfastly denies the truth with vigor, I wonder.

    Exhibit A: The “Unmitigated Disaster”

    In 1998, McCaffrey told CNN’s “Talkback Live” that the murder rate in Holland was twice that in the US. “The overall crime rate in Holland is probably 40 percent higher than the United States,” said McCaffrey. That’s drugs.” He called Dutch drug policy, “an unmitigated disaster.”

    The Dutch government’s Central Planning Bureau poured scorn on McCaffrey’s figures. Official data put the Dutch murder rate at 1.8 per 100,000 people in 1996, up from 1.5 at the start of the decade. The Dutch say the U.S. rate is 9.3 per 100,000.

    “The figure (McCaffrey is using) is not right. He is adding in attempted murders,” a planning bureau spokesman said.

    Confronted with reality, McCaffrey denied it.

    Instead of apologizing for the error, McCaffrey’s deputy, Jim McDonough, responded, “Let’s say she’s right. What you are left with is that they are a much more violent society and more inept [at murder], and that’s not much to brag about.”

    A month later, McCaffrey defended himself:

    There was a huge uproar (in Holland) over murder rates and crime stats, and was I right or wrong?… For an American to suggest that their crime rates were higher than the U.S. absolutely blew their mind

    Actually, what blows their mind is that a man of such importance could lie. Though McCaffrey did finally admit that Dutch drug policy may just be a “mitigated disaster.”

    That whole bit is classic good ammo for the anti-drug-war cause. But it’s 11 years ago now. And I don’t like to hold grudges. So imagine my surprise last night.

    Exhibit B: Conant v. McCaffrey

    After being kind enough to tell me good things about my father (before we were on the air), McCaffrey whole-hoggedly denies what happened when he was Drug Czar. “Nonsense!” McCaffrey says. The Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch sets him straight.

    You can read more of Lynch’s excellent take on McCaffrey here:

    Whatever one’s view happens to be on drug policy, the historical record is there for any fair-minded person to see — and yet McCaffrey looked right into the camera and denied past actions by himself and other federal agents. And he didn’t say, “I think that’s wrong” or “I don’t remember it that way.” He baldly asserted that my recounting of the facts was “nonsense.” Now I suppose some will say that falsehoods are spoken on TV fairly often–maybe, I’m not sure–but it is distressing that this character held the posts that he did and that he continues to instruct cadets at West Point!

    The court case, Conant v. McCaffrey was in McCaffrey’s name, for crying out loud! [though the decision was renamed Conant v. Walters by the time it became law of the land in 2002.]

    Does McCaffrey not remember it? Does he believe it never happened? I’m tempted to believe the general at his word. Which means… well… I’ll leave you to decide. Here’s what the court ruled in 2000:

    On December 30, 1996, less than two months after the Compassionate Use Act[Medicinal Marijuana]took effect, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy[that’s McCaffrey]… stated “that a practitioner’s action of recommending or prescribing Schedule I controlled substances[that’s marijuana]is not consistent with the ‘public interest’ … and will lead to administrative action by the Drug Enforcement Administration to revoke the practitioner’s registration.”

    …

    The Administration’s Response stated that the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services would send a letter to national, state, and local practitioner associations and licensing boards, stating unequivocally that the DEA would seek to revoke the registrations of physicians who recommended or prescribed Schedule I controlled substances.

    Now over time, the administration backed down a bit from the hard line. But that doesn’t mean it never happened. The court ruled unequivocally against the government.

  • Me and Lou Dobbs

    I was on Lou Dobbs today.
    I didn’t have the heart to tell him I love immigrants.
    You can read more (and see the video) here.

  • Hard Core in Brazil

    Just a week or two after Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent article in the New Yorker on drugs and favelasin Rio de Janeiro, drug gangs shoot down a police helicopter. That’s hard core. I mean, I’ve thought about shooting down police helicopters, but luckily I lack the .30-caliber anti-aircraft gun used to bring that baby down. Three police officers were killed. All together, 21 or so died in related chaos.

    I can’t think of a worse combination than drugs being illegal andthe government giving up to control to drug gangs in the ghettos. It’s one thing to fight a war on drugs. It’s another to start a war on drugs and then give up large parts of your city away to the criminal drug gangs.

    There are close to 5,000 murders a year in Rio de Janeiro. That’s a rate about twice as high as Baltimore and about 10 times as high as NYC.
    “Rio is one of the very few cities in the world where you have whole areas controlled by armed forces that are not of the state.”

    Here’s Anderson’s latest update. And his audio slide show. Good stuff.

  • Ethan Nadelmann Profile

    In Newsweek.

  • Prohibition Deaths vs. Prohibition Deaths

    Pete Guither at Drug WarRant has an interesting post, here stolen in its entirety:

    Robert Almonte, executive director, Texas Narcotic Officers Association and El Paso police deputy chief (retired), had a different view of the war on drugs than most of the learned participants in the recent conference in El Paso (surprise, surprise): ‘War on Drugs’ conference got the issue wrong.

    It’s a pretty bad piece of dreck, full of standard stale prohibitionist misdirection, strawmen, and cherry-picked statistics. I particularly noted the ending:

    Our children deserve better; El Paso deserves better. O’Rourke, in calling for the public to exert pressure on our elected officials to legalize marijuana, has stated: “As evidence, I point to the 3,200 people who have been killed in Juárez.”

    I say to you, Mr. O’Rourke, as evidence against legalizing marijuana and other dangerous drugs, I point to the countless Americans and their families whose lives have been destroyed by drugs and the over 38,000 Americans who die from drug overdoses each year.

    Let me get this straight. As a defense of prohibition, we should ignore the 3200 killed in Juárez under prohibition, and instead focus on the 38,000 Americans killed by overdoses under prohibition.

    Right.

  • Personally Dissed by the Drug Czar

    And by the President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police! Mr. Kerlinkowske, Mr Laine, nice to meet you.

    At an October 3rd address at the 2009 International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference, Czar Kerlikowske said (via stop the drug war):

    But I must underscore how important your help on this issue is – on the streets, within the criminal justice system, and in the court of public opinion. Recently, Peter Moskos and Stanford Franklin, members of a group called “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition,” published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for the legalization of drugs. They claimed that legalization would increase officer safety.

    Chief Laine, as President of IACP, responded with a letter to the editor. The Washington Post did not print it. This letter, which I am holding in my hand, should have been printed. As Russ appropriately put it, “The simple truth is that legalizing narcotics will not make life better for our citizens, ease the level of crime and violence in our communities or reduce the threat faced by law enforcement officers. To suggest otherwise ignores reality.”

    From the Crime Report:

    Kerlikowske criticized the Washington Post for not publishing a letter from IACP President Russell Laine in rebuttal to an op-ed article the newspaper had run asserting that drug legalization would make police officers safer. … “We have to be smarter about drugs, which doesn’t mean softer or weaker.”

    Smarter? Is that the answer? Because the people that have been fighting the war on drugs for the past century have been… er, stupid? In the letter, Mr. Laine says we ignore reality and calls us “repulsive” for linking the war on drugs to officers’ safety. No time to “retreat,” he says. “It is not time to legalize drugs; it is time to get them off our streets.”

    I’d love to hear his plan to get drugs off our streets.

    I bet it won’t work.

    Nor does Mr. Laine explain how regulating and controlling drug distribution would increase availability and use.

    Mr. Laine is police chief of Algonquin, Illinois, a little rich white boom exurb outside of Chicago. Between 1999 and 2007 there was one homicide in Algonquin. One. In nine years. I’m just sayin’…. Mr. Laine and the 50 officers under his command must be doing a very good job.

    You can read our op-ed in the Washington Post, the one that started this whole kerfuffle, here.

  • Mass. Decrim Has No Effect On Schools

    Mass. Decrim Has No Effect On Schools

    So say some Massachusetts school officials–the same ones who say decriminalization “sends a terrible message to kids.” The story by John Hilliard is here (via the Agitator).

    This really is no surprise, but it’s important for a few reasons. Prohibitionists seem to care more about “the message” than about actual drug use and drug harms. For too many, it’s a moral issue and not a policy issue.

    I like to ask those who support the war on drugs if they would support legalization iflegalization and regulation decreased drug use. I’d say close to half say “no.” Better, they tell me, to keep drugs illegal regardless of drug usage rates. Sometimes increased drug use and overdose deaths can be useful, some drug-warriors even say, for having people overdose in the ghetto sends a powerful “message” to others.

    Hmmmmmmm. This sort of ends the debate. So it’s not about drugs. It’s about morals and the power and symbolism of the law.

    Prohibition is about a conservative world view that sees drugs as evil. And evil needs to be outlawed. Prohibition is about big-government telling people what to do and how to live their lives.

    Take Harry Asslinger (oops, honest typo but much too good to delete)–I mean Harry Anslinger. He was very happy, after failing to maintain alcohol Prohibition, to raise the false alarm about marijuana.


    Perhaps Anslinger’s greatest accomplishment was to push marijuana from a fringe drug into the mainstream. That’s what happens when you call it the evil weed and highlight the moral turpitude of minorities, immigrants, Catholics, liberals, and other city folk who, like Anslinger believed, were destroying the moral fiber of America.

    Whatever. Good or bad, those cool cats sure knew how to party!

    In my mind, the debate on drug decriminalization comes down to one main issue: in an era of legal and regulated drugs, would drug use increase or decrease? Of course we can’t be sure because we haven’t tried it. But the evidence strongly suggests the use would go up and might go down.

    System of liberalization and/or decriminalization result in no increase in drug use. Marijuana usage rates in the Netherlands (where it is publicly sold and legally consumed) are lowerthan in the U.S. Decriminalization in Portugal has also been a success.

    How does this work? Lot’s of reasons. Forbidden fruit. Distrust of authority. And consider what Diego Gambetta recently pointed out to me: there’s a lot more pressure in social situations to conform and partake in illegalactivities than for comparably legalactivities.

    If a joint is being passed around, you’re expected, especially in young crowds, to smoke a little. This serves two functions beyond social bonding.

    1) It shows you’re not a cop.

    2) You can’t blackmail anybody with your knowledge of illegal behavior since you’re guilty too.

    There’s a lot more pressure (especially for teenagers) to smoke a joint being passed around than to smoke an offered cigarette. These days cigarettes, regulated and taxed, aren’t even being offered much.

    Marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts has not resulting in a bunch of school kids suddenly discovering the drug and firing up. Hell, the first time I ever saw marijuana was in school, watching a drug deal go down in the bathroom (regulated drugs aren’t sold in school bathrooms). And the best anti-drug lesson I ever got was from the guy who sat behind me in first-period German class. He would also come in late, stoned, and reeking of (tobacco) cigarettes. He never learned any German. But then neither did I.

  • He gave “all the money he had on him” – $23

    An anonymous reader sent me this link by Rob Moore and Donald Fraser of the Franklin County Citizen & The News Leader. Thanks. It’s an update on the shooting of Jonathan Ayers.

    The woman who was in the Rev. Jonathan Ayers’ car moments before he was shot by undercover drug agents in Toccoa on Sept. 1 is refuting reports that Ayers was involved in illegal activities.

    “I’m an addict,” 26-year-old Kayla Barrett admitted Tuesday, saying that Ayers was ministering to her on the day of his death.

    …

    She said that, over time, Ayers had been lecturing her and trying to get her to straighten out her life and to get off drugs.

    …

    “He told me I was too young to be living like I was living,” she said. “He didn’t want me to waste my life.”

    …

    Barrett said Ayers offered her a ride back to the motel.

    …

    Barrett said she asked Ayers if he could help her out with the back rent, and that he gave “all the money he had on him” – $23.

    “His last words to me were I didn’t owe him anything,” Barrett said. “Probably 15-20 minutes after that I could hear the shots.”

    Responding to allegations she has heard, she said, “No, we did not have sex.”

    …

    “He [Ayers] doesn’t have any part in any kind of drug activity,” Barrett insisted. “He’s never solicited me for prostitution.”

    …

    Barrett, who is charged with two counts of sale of cocaine, doesn’t deny that she sold drugs to an undercover agent.

  • Hoosier Grandmother Arrested for Purchasing Cold Medication

    The Agitator has the story.