It's been a slower than normal week in drug war news, but a few articles I found hit close to home, so I thought I'd give a little background on why I've become interested in this topic, and why I feel it's one that people should pay attention to.
In high school, I lived in Whitpain Township, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. I wasn't exposed to any illegal drugs in high school, just alcohol. It wasn't until my friends and I went off to college that we became familiar very quickly with more things. Despite seeing it at college, my first time smoking pot wasn't until I headed back home for winter break, and I found that a large number of those I graduated from high school with were smoking it as well.
I went to college in another state, and eventually moved to the west coast, but my trips back home were always a crash course in understanding the ugly side of the drug war. A friend of mine who failed out of school and returned home was repeatedly pulled over and searched illegally. When the cops would find something, no report was ever written. In a local dive bar in the borough of Norristown nearby, we'd play foosball with middle-aged off-duty cops who would head into the bathroom to do lines of cocaine between games; and in the mansions of Gwynedd Valley, I'd attend parties where the children of wealthy executives did the same with what those cops couldn't get their hands on. The situation was so transparent that when a neighboring township hired rookie cops, my friends back home were on alert that the newbies weren't part of the game, and might actually write them up for possession.
But despite all this, drug laws remained stiff. No politician in the area would dare mention changing them. For a while, I thought most of this was normal, but after years of living in two of the most liberal cities towards drug use in the U.S. (Ann Arbor, and then Seattle), and finding that the amount of people doing drugs was no different (and with less crime, etc), it began to make sense. With that in mind, this corrupt cop story made me laugh:
In Whitpain, Pennsylvania, an investigation into drugs missing from the township police department's evidence room has concluded without any charges being filed, the Philadelphia Reporter noted last week. According to Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, former police Detective Sgt. William Bunting was named by other law enforcement officers as the probable culprit, but Castor couldn't make the case.
"We were asked by the Chief (Joseph Stemple) to investigate narcotics that went missing from the evidence room," Castor said. "We were unable to determine how the drugs became missing." That was because department policy allowed too many people access to the evidence room, he said. "We couldn't determine with sufficient particularity who we thought was stealing the drugs," Castor said. He added that he had written a letter to the department urging it to "drastically tighten up" its policies. Chief Stemple said he has now done that.As I mentioned, I now live in Seattle, a city where voters passed an initiative that instructs the police to treat adult marijuana use as the department's lowest priority. That policy, however, doesn't cover people growing 550 plants in a house down the street from me. A lot of people would say that this is a failure of Seattle's approach towards drugs, but the reality is that I don't hear gunshots at night. I don't have drug addicts lying in the gutter in front of my house. And I don't worry about being mugged on my way home from the bus stop. Nor did I worry about these things in Ann Arbor, where possession of marijuana is a $25 fine.
At a national level, the DEA and office of the Drug Czar copy the methods of local law enforcement that have proven to be the most ineffective. I don't know the neighbors whose grow operation was busted this week, but we will have truly succeeded in "winning" the drug war when folks with the skills to run an operation that large are deemed equal to those who brew beer and distill liquor. For now, they're just more victims of the war on drugs.
In other news...
Andrew Somers has a very clear and concise article on about.com on how to deal with drugs.
Pete at Drug WarRant points to an action alert on the Drug Policy Alliance site to stop Congress from denying aid to Katrina victims if they have a previous drug conviction.
The Drug Policy Alliance also breaks down prohibitionist Mark Souder's latest idiotic public statement
The Gnostic posts up a tremendous diary on the recent news concerning marijuana and cancer.
I hope this diarist is either joking or a pre-teen.
Grits For Breakfast finds an article about selective enforcement in the town of Edna, TX
Radley Balko writes about Richard Paey, a victim of the DEA's war on doctors who dare to prescribe pain medication.
Libby at Last One Speaks breaks down the Washington Post article on the extradition of an Afghani drug lord to the United States. Also from Last One Speaks, a post on Marc Emery.
Mexican President Vicente Fox is talking tough about winning the drug war, but this article in the New York Times explains the difficulties he faces.
Methamphetamine use is on the rise in Australia.
An Indian Drug Expert is advising that India move away from prohibition because it doesn't work.
The city of San Francisco is set to pass medical marijuana regulations.
The city of Santa Cruz is considering setting up an office for monitoring and distributing medical marijuana. (via here)
Anti-prohibition billboards are appearing in Denver (via here)
Brown University students protested the High Education Act's drug provision.
Two Marion, Indiana elementary school students (aged 7 and 10) were caught with marijuana in two separate incidents last week.
A man who was featured on an undercover video on illegal street gangs showing off a marijuana grow operation was arrested in Fresno.
The Agitator find a dangerous squirrel in Massachusetts belonging to a drug suspect. Was he on crack?