Reason Magazine - Topics > Drug Policy

No Pot Arrests in Denver During the Convention?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:46:00 EDT

In 2005 Denver voters approved an initiative that repealed local penalties for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. But police ignored the initiative, continuing to arrest pot smokers for violating state law. In November voters approved another initiative, instructing city officials to make minor pot possession cases their "lowest law enforcement priority." Not surprisingly, it looks like police are ignoring the will of the people again. Yesterday drug policy reformer Mason Tvert, who led the campaigns for both initiatives, told a panel charged with implementing the new law that marijuana arrests in Denver, which totaled 1,600 last year, are on pace to hit 1,900 this year, without taking into account a surge that's likely to accompany the Democratic National Convention, which begins on Monday. "After the Democratic National Convention ends, there will be hundreds of marijuana cases all showing up at the same time," Tvert said. That's if police ignore a resolution, approved by the panel yesterday, urging them to refrain from arresting or citing pot smokers during the convention. According to A.P., "city officials say the resolution is not binding."

Charge First, Research Later

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:19:00 EDT

When Bismarck, North Dakota, police found eight ounces of the newly illegal psychedelic herb Salvia divinorum in Kenneth Rau's house last April, they claimed it was enough for about 900 doses. Rau—who appears to be the first American prosecuted for possession of salvia, which remains legal in most of the country—therefore faced a charge of possessing salvia with intent to deliver. Press accounts say that's a Class A felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The online version of the North Dakota Code (PDF) says it's a Class B felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison (Class A being reserved for possession of narcotics, methamphetamine, or more than 100 pounds of marijuana with intent to deliver). Either way, the potential penalty was much more severe than Rau anticipated when he bought the salvia for $35 on eBay in December. North Dakota's salvia ban had taken effect the previous August, and Rau (quite plausibly) says he was not aware of it.

The Drug War Chronicle reports that Rau recently was offered a plea bargain under which he would have spent five years in prison, which someone facing the possibility of 10 or 20 years might seriously consider. Rau, who insists (again, quite plausibly) that the salvia was strictly for his own use, turned down the offer. It's a good thing he did, because shortly thereafter the prosecution admitted that police had overestimated the number of salvia doses in Rau's possession by a factor of more than 100. According to a story in today's Bismarck Tribune, "Burleigh County Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia Feland said in court on Wednesday that authorities researched salvia divinorum and learned that the amount Rau had was about 8 doses." The salvia charge therefore has been reduced to a Class C felony, which carries a maximum penalty of five years.

The Drug War Chronicle notes another example of the drug cops' ignorance about drugs: Rau was initially charged with possession of psilocybin because he had, in addition to the salvia, Amanita muscaria (a.k.a. fly agaric) mushrooms. Police later dropped that charge because they "figured out that amanita does not contain psilocybin."

The Tribune profiles Rau here. My previous post on his case is here. My comments on the broader salvia crackdown are here and here. Last year I touched on the distinction between psilocybin mushrooms and the cooler-looking (but less fun) fly agaric in a book review.

Where "is the constitutional grant of authority to ban mere possession of cocaine today?"

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:09:00 EDT

Does the Constitution allow jury nullification? Thomas R. Eddlem certainly thinks so. As the Cato Institute's Tim Lynch details in a superb post, Eddlem was booted off a jury for daring to question federal drug laws:

The jury sent a note to the trial judge with the following query: Since the Constitution needed to be amended in 1919 to authorize federal criminal prosecutions for manufacturing and smuggling alcohol, a juror wanted to know from the judge where "is the constitutional grant of authority to ban mere possession of cocaine today?"

[...]

[District Court Judge William G.] Young tried to assure the jury that the federal drug laws are constitutional because the Supreme Court has interpreted the commerce clause quite expansively. When the jury sent out more notes about a juror that wasn't going to sign off on an unconstitutional prosecution, Young halted the proceedings to identify the "problem juror." Once discovered, that juror was replaced with an alternate-over the objections of defense counsel. Shortly thereafter, the new jury returned with guilty verdicts on several cocaine-related charges.

So who's right, Judge Young or citizen Eddlem? Here's legal scholar Randy Barnett:

There is little question that, at the Founding, jurors were triers of both the law and the facts. In essence, this provided a popular check on an overreaching legislature and a supine judiciary, although a check that would only operate on a case-by-case basis. A jury could find that a statute was unjust generally, or only as applied in the particular case. This would affect the general enforceability of a statute only if many juries agreed.

For more on Eddlem and his jury nullification, check out this Boston Globe story. And don't miss the accompanying photo, complete with a copy of Judge Andrew Napolitano's A Nation of Sheep on Eddlem's table.

Norm Stamper: Former Seattle top cop on the need for drug legalization

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Norm Stamper is a cop who saw it all during his 34 years on active duty. As police of Seattle from 1994 through 2000, he was in charge during violent World Trade Organization protests in the Emerald City.

Stamper, who holds a Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior from United States International University, has emerged as one of the most thoughtful and outspoken critics of the war on drugs, which he believes causes untold misery, undermines effective law enforcement, and doesn't begin to pass any sort of cost-benefit analysis. As important, the libertarian Stamper believes that the drug war-and other wars on the behaviors on consenting adults-does great violence to the idea that we own our bodies.

Stamper is the author of the Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (2005) and now works with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a nonprofit created by former cops to "reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition."

Former British Drug Warrior Calls for Legalization

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:25:00 EDT

Julian Critchley says his experience as a top anti-drug official in the government of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair convinced him the war on drugs is futile and destructive. Critchley, who was director of the Cabinet Office's Anti-Drug Co-ordination Unit, now favors legalization. He says his conclusions were widely shared by drug policy officials:

I joined the unit more or less agnostic on drugs policy, being personally opposed to drug use, but open-minded about the best way to deal with the problem. I was certainly not inclined to decriminalise. However, during my time in the unit, as I saw more and more evidence of "what works," to quote New Labour's mantra of the time, it became apparent to me that...enforcement and supply-side interventions were largely pointless. They have no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs....
I think what was truly depressing about my time in UKADCU was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, the government and voluntary sectors held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those intelligent, knowledgeable people were forced to repeat the nonsensical mantra that the government would be "tough on drugs," even though they all knew the government's policy was actually causing harm.

Speaking of depressing, Critchley's boss, drug czar Keith Hellawell, quit Blair's government over its decision to downgrade the legal treatment of marijuana, making simple possession of small quantities a "non-arrestable offense." The current Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, wants to reverse that modest step in the right direction, calling today's marijuana "lethal" and insisting, "We really have got to send out a message to young people [that] this is not acceptable."

[Thanks to Nathaniel Goggin for the tip.]

'The Citizens Deserve Peace'—but Not Freedom

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:13:00 EDT

On Tuesday the city council of Helena—West Helena, Arkansas, unanimously gave police the authority to impose a 24-hour curfew on any part of the city. A.P. reports that a 24-hour curfew already has been in effect in one especially crime-ridden neighborhood of the town for a week. (Doesn't that make it a 168-hour curfew?) So far the curfew has resulted in 32 arrests, mostly for misdemeanors. Although police, who are armed with "military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights" as well as "short-barrel shotguns," could arrest people simply for leaving their homes, they say they have refrained from doing so:

[Police Chief Fred] Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said.

The aptly nicknamed Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson averred that "at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law." He evidently did not address the propriety of being on the street during the other 23 hours of the day. More generally, city officials dismissed constitutional objections raised by the American Civil Liberties Union:

"If somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I'm fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here," Mayor James Valley said. "The citizens deserve peace, [believe] that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."

I confess the distinction between infringing on constitutional rights and violating the Constitution escapes me. But according to A.P., "The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost." They argued, in effect, that civil liberties are a luxury that people in poor, violence-plagued neighborhoods cannot afford, "at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney [from the ACLU] if she'd live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs."

Yet the violence is mostly related to the illegal drug trade. So the government creates a black market that disproportionately hurts poor people, enforces its drug laws in a way that disproportionately hurts poor people, and responds to the resulting violence and disorder with police tactics that disproportionately hurt poor people. When civil libertarians object, they are dismissed as privileged pointy-heads who do not understand the problems of poor people.

[via The Freedom Files]

Mutant Synchronized Divers and Gene-Doped Gymnasts

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:51:00 EDT

In today's NYT Science Times, my former boss John Tierney proposes a dope and let dope approach to the Olympics.

Sure, pumping 15-year-old full of anabolic steroids might not be copacetic, but steroids and other enhancement techniques don't seem to do much lasting damage to adults—perhaps less than the knee-busting, concussion-inducing, back-throwing sports themselves. And it's not likely that testing will keep pace as doping becomes subtler and more gene-oriented.

Tierney's proposal:

I’d like to see what would happen if someone started a new anything-goes competition for athletes over 25. If you have any ideas for how to run it or what to call it — MaxMatch? UltraSports? Mutant Games? — submit them at nytimes.com/tierneylab. Maybe fans would object to these “unnatural” athletes. But maybe not. The fans, after all, include people with laser-corrected eyes, chemically whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies. Not to mention the pharmacopeia coursing through our veins.

Plus, every one likes to see a record well and truly smashed, even if there is an asterisk in the record books.

Geek note: For those interested in the idea of genetically and mechanically enhanced beings battling it out in games and war, you should read Dan Simmons' Ilium and Olympos, a science fiction recasting of the Iliad and the Odyssey, with nanobot-powered and gene-doped gods.

More on the joys of steroids here and here.

The First Download Is Always Free

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:54:00 EDT

Tech radio host Kim Komando sows panic about . . . digital drugs?

But websites are targeting your children with so-called digital drugs. These are audio files designed to induce drug-like effects.
All your child needs is a music player and headphones.
Digital drugs supposedly synchronize your brain waves with the sound. Hence, they allegedly alter your mental state.
Binaural beats create a beating sound. Other noises may be included with binaural beats. This is intended to mask their unpleasant sound.

Just like mixers do with alcohol!

Some sites provide binaural beats that have innocuous effects. For example, some claim to help you develop extrasensory powers like telepathy and psychokinesis.
Other sites offer therapeutic binaural beats. They help you relax or meditate. Some allegedly help you overcome addiction or anxiety. Others purport to help you lose weight or eliminate gray hair.
However, most sites are more sinister. They sell audio files ("doses") that supposedly mimic the effects of alcohol and marijuana.
But it doesn't end there. You'll find doses that purportedly mimic the effects of LSD, crack, heroin and other hard drugs. There are also doses of a sexual nature. I even found ones that supposedly simulate heaven and hell.
[...]
Companies that sell digital drugs claim they're safe. Supposedly, they won't affect your physical health.
Let's think about this for a moment. The sites claim binaural beats cause the same effects as illegal drugs. These drugs impair coordination and can cause hallucinations. They've caused countless fatal accidents, like traffic collisions.
If binaural beats work as promised, they are not safe. They could also create a placebo effect. The expectation elicits the response. Again, this is unsafe.
At the very least, digital drugs promote drug use. Some sites say binaural beats can be used with illegal drugs.
The sites also look favorably on the effects of illegal drugs. So, talk to your children. Make sure they understand the dangers of this culture. It could be a small jump from digital drugs to the real thing.

The Internet sure is a scary place. Probing journalist that I am, I downloaded the "marijuana, cocaine, peyote, and opium" pack from the website I-Doser. The tracks are ambient and soothing, but that's about all they did for me.

Cue legislation from outraged elected officials in 5 . . 4 . . 3 . . .

Still No Right to Holy Smoke

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:32:00 EDT

Church of Cognizance founders Dan and Mary Quaintance, whose case I discussed in my June 2007 reason story about religious use of drugs, are scheduled to be tried in Albuquerque this month on federal marijuana charges. The Quaintances, who were caught near Lordsburg, New Mexico, in 2006 with 172 pounds of marijuana, tried to get the charges against them dismissed by arguing that prosecuting them for possessing cannabis, their church's sacrament, violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). A federal judge rejected that claim, concluding that the Quaintances' belief system—unlike, say, that of the peyote-consuming Native American Church or the ayahuasca-drinking Uniao do Vegetal—does not qualify as a bona fide religion, an outcome that illustrates the peril of inviting the government to assess people's religious convictions. It now seems inevitable that the Quaintances will be convicted, in which case they will each face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

Another member of the church, Daniel Hardesty, also has been unsuccessful in pressing a religious freedom defense. Arrested in 2005, Hardesty challenged his conviction for possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia, citing an Arizona law similar to RFRA. On July 31 the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected his argument. Unlike the federal judge who heard the Quaintances' case, who questioned whether they really believed what they claimed to believe, the state court conceded Hardesty's sincerity. But it said he had failed to show that the burden on his religious freedom was not justified by a compelling government interest:

This statute [banning marijuana] does not provide any religious exemptions nor does it contemplate an exemption for the use of marijuana that would be "consistent with public health and safety."...By imposing a total ban, the Legislature has deemed that the use and possession of marijuana always pose a risk to public health and welfare.

The court was troubled that marijuana use by Church of Cognizance members is not restricted to particular times and locations, concluding that "an accommodation of Defendant's unlimited use of marijuana would severely hinder the State's ability to enforce the law." At the same time, the court left the door open to future challenges:

Our holding...does not mean that a defendant can never pursue a religious freedom defense against marijuana-type possession laws. Even in circumstances in which the case law and legislative history demonstrate the existence of a well-established compelling governmental interest and that the government has chosen the least restrictive means to achieve its interest, a defendant may successfully assert a religious freedom defense if he can present independent evidence that negates existing authority. Also, in areas in which case law and legislative history are not so well developed, the State must introduce evidence to support a restriction of a religious practice. Here, however, precedent is overwhelming, and Defendant has failed to proffer any evidence to counter that precedent establishing the dangers of marijuana.

Here is a PDF of the opinion.

[via the Drug War Chronicle]

Berwyn Heights Drug Raid: The Police Keep Digging

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:17:00 EDT

The violent drug raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo is now making national headlines. Calvo was also on CNN yesterday.

In the raid, police in Prince George's County, Maryland intercepted a package addressed to Calvo's wife that contained about 30 pounds or marijuana. Undercover officers completed the delivery to Calvo's home, then stormed the place in SWAT gear when Calvo brought the package inside. During the raid, the police shot and killed Calvo's two black labs, including one Calvo says was running away to hide. Calvo and his mother-in-law were then handcuffed and questioned at gunpoint while his dead dogs lay nearby in pools of their own blood.

Since the raid last week, we've learned that police have arrested two men in conjunction with a scheme using delivery services to ship marijuana across the country. The plan was for operatives within the companies to intercept the packages before they reached their targets. The destination addresses may have been random, or simply chosen because of their location along routes convenient to the scheme. In fact, the Washington Post reports in the story linked above that some packages were accidentally delivered, at which point operatives went to the houses of the innocent people who'd received them to ask for their return.

Despite all of this, Prince George's County police refuse to apologize for the no-knock raid, for the tactics they used in the raid, or for killing Calvo's dogs.

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.

High told the Washington Post that the raid "was conducted responsibly, given what deputies and officers knew at the time." That's absurd. High doesn't even seem to consider the possibility that perhaps the officers didn't know enough to conduct the raid when they did, and that maybe they should have done a bit more investigating before going all commando on the Calvo family.

Interestingly, the state of Maryland does not issue warrants for no-knock raids. However, police may determine at the scene that a no-knock entry is necessary if one of two conditions are present. The first if the police have reasonable suspicion that the suspect may pose a threat to the officers' safety. The second is if police have reasonable suspicion that the suspect may destroy the evidence.

Though these two "exigent circumstances" exceptions carve gaping holes in the knock-and-announce requirement, it's difficult to see how this situation fit either exception. Prince George's police say they heard Calvo's mother-in-law scream as they approached, which they say made them fear someone inside may grab a gun or dispose of the marijuana.

Both prospects are dubious. If the police had done any surveillance or investigation at all, they'd have realized that this was the home of the local mayor, an unlikely candidate to engage in a suicide shootout with raiding cops. And unless the Calvos own an industrial strength toilet, it's unlikely that he'd have been able to flush 30 pounds of marijuana in the time it takes police to knock and announce themselves.

Moreover, even if seeing the cops approaching did tip off Calvo and his mother-in-law, that's the whole purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement—to give suspects notice that the police are coming, and to allow them the opportunity to consent to a peaceful search and avoid the violence of a forceful police entry.

Still, courts have in the past been loathe to question police officers who find exigent circumstances at the scene of the search. Perhaps the high profile of this raid will lead to more scrutiny.

Finally, I guess I'd just add that the national media coverage of the Berwyn Heights raid seems to be predicated on the assumption that the most troubling aspects of the raid—the killing of the dogs, the violent tactics, the lax investigation, the likely innocent victims, and the police obstinacy after the fact—are unusual. They aren't. The only thing unusual about this raid is that its victim happened to be an elected politician.

Developments in the Rachel Hoffman Case

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:09:00 EDT

Some new developments in the case of Rachel Hoffman, the Florida college student who was murdered last spring after being lured by Tallahassee police to work as a drug informant:

• A Florida state senator has filed a claims bill that would allow Hoffman's family to be compensated should they prevail in a lawsuit.

• Tallahassee police apparently told a grand jury the improbable story that Hoffman was slinging $35,000 per week in dope. To review, when the police raided Hoffman's apartment earlier this year they found five ounces of marijuana and six ecstasy pills.

• After a grand jury slammed the Tallahassee Police department in a scathing report last week, the five officers involved in the Hoffman case have been suspended—with pay, of course.

• Finally, a weird pissing match has broken out in all of this. Apparently, there were three DEA agents involved in the Hoffman case, but the federal government refused to let those agents testify before the state grand jury. In response, Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs has vowed not to prosecute any future cases involving DEA agents. I guess it can't be a bad thing to have drug warriors fighting amongst themselves.

If all of this attention directed at the Hoffman case effects some policy changes with respect to the use of drug informants, or further erodes public support for the drug war in general, all the better.

But I can't help but note the difference between the massive coverage of and attention paid to the Hoffman case with, say, the relatively nonexistent coverage of the shooting death of Isaac Singletary in January 2007.

I'll play coy and leave it up to you, Hit & Run commenters, to discuss what might be behind the difference.

Disappearing Ditchweed

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:01:00 EDT

A perennial story in the annals of drug war stupidity is the Drug Enforcement Administration's tally of cannabis plants destroyed under its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program. Year after year, the figures show that nearly all of the eradicated plants are ditchweed, the feral, nonpsychoactive descendants of hemp that American farmers used to legally grow for fiber. A couple years ago, for instance, I noted that "98 percent of the 223 million or so cannabis plants 'eradicated' by American law enforcement agencies in 2005 were feral hemp." Since these plants do not contain enough THC to get anyone high, the program is a vivid illustration of how drug warriors waste taxpayer money. NORML's Paul Armentano reports that the DEA seems finally to have wised up:

How much ditchweed did police confiscate in 2007? That would be anyone's guess.

Upon referencing Table 4.38 (Number of marijuana plants eradicated and seized, arrests made, weapons seized, and value of assets seized under the Drug Enforcement Administration's Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, by State, 2007) in the latest version of the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, visitors will discover that the column that previously reported on "ditchweed" seizures (in prior years' tables, it was seventh column from the left) is now conspicuously missing.

Berwyn Heights, MD Drug Raid Update: Cops Didn't Have a No-Knock Warrant

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:29:00 EDT

It now appears that the entire raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo may have been illegal. Last week, police stormed Calvo's home without knocking, shot and killed his two black labs, and questioned him and his mother-in-law at gunpoint over a delivered package of marijuana that police now concede may have been intended for someone else.

The Washington Post reports that the police didn't even bother to get a no-knock warrant, which means the tactics they used were illegal:

A Prince George's police spokesman said last week that a Sheriff's Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers were operating under such a [no-knock] warrant when they broke down the door of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, shooting and killing his black Labrador retrievers.
But a review of the warrant indicates that police neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking. Northrup found probable cause to suspect that drugs might be in the house and granted police a standard search warrant.
"There's nothing in the four corners of the warrant saying anything about the Calvos being a threat to law enforcement," said Calvo's attorney, Timothy Maloney. "This was a lawless act by law enforcement."

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has given the police leeway to disregard the knock-and-announce requirement. In June 2006, the Court ruled in Hudson v. Michigan that evidence seized in raids in which police fail to properly observe the knock-and-announce rule isn't subject to the Exclusionary Rule. Justice Scalia assured us that there's a "new professionalism" taking root in police departments across the country today, rendering the Exclusionary Rule in such cases unnecessary.

Lima, Ohio SWAT Officer Acquitted in the Killing of Tarika Wilson

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:23:00 EDT

A Lima, Ohio jury has acquitted police officer Joseph Chavalia of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson. Chavalia shot and killed Wilson and wounded her infant son during a drug raid last January. Wilson was unarmed.

During the raid, one of Chavalia's fellow officers shot and killed the two dogs owned by Wilson's boyfriend and the target of the raid, Anthony Terry. Chavalia testified that he mistook his fellow officer's shots at the dogs for hostile gunfire coming from the bedroom where Wilson was standing with her child. Chavalia then fired blindly into the bedroom.

The jury concluded that Chavalia reasonably feared for his life when he heard the gunshots. I guess they were then willing to overlook Chavalia's mistaking an unarmed woman holding a baby for an armed drug dealer, and the fact that he fired blindly into a room without first identifying what he was shooting at. It's too bad that that same sort of deference isn't given to the people on the receiving end of these raids when they too understandably confuse the police officers who wake them from sleep and invade their homes for criminal intruders.

This case illustrates the low margin for error in these raids, and why they're a bad idea even when the police do hit the correct house. Anthony Terry may be a bad man. But these sorts of tactics are too volatile and too dangerous to be using on anyone except for those people who pose an immediate risk to the public. Even the smallest mistakes can lead to unnecessary casualties.

It also shows how layer upon layer of flawed arguments can allow something as unjustifiable as the shooting death of an unarmed woman and the near-killing of her infant son to be dismissed as mere collateral damage. The initial argument is that we need to prohibit drugs to protect people from the harm they cause. That's followed by the argument that we need to use aggressive, paramilitary raids to apprehend drug dealers, because they might dispose of evidence or shoot cops were drug warrants to be served by less confrontational means. That's followed by the argument that we have to forgive cops who kill innocent people in these raids because the raids themselves are incredibly volatile and dangerous. Never mind that the police created the danger and volatility in the first place.

Put those arguments together and you get the absurd premise that the government's killing of Tarika Wilson—and all of the drug raid deaths that came before her—is an acceptable consequence of the government's responsibility to protect her (and all of us) from the effects of illicit drugs.

That simply doesn't add up.

Collateral Damage

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Earlier this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida, raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman. Her friends say Hoffman was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and they concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and ecstasy within her social circle. Hoffman was at the time undergoing compulsory drug treatment after another run-in with the police, in which they found 20+ grams of marijuana in her car during a traffic stop. The raid turned up another five ounces of marijuana, six ecstasy pills, and assorted pot-related paraphernalia.

The cops threatened Hoffman with prison time, then agreed to let her off easy if she’d become a police informant and set up a deal with her supplier. They never informed Hoffman’s attorney or the state prosecutor of the arrangement. They wired Hoffman and asked her to arrange to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine, and a gun, a deal that would have run well over $10,000. Hoffman’s friends and family report that all three purchases would also be drastically out of character for her—which means the dealers she was buying from were almost surely on to her.

Tallahassee police found Hoffman’s body not long after. The first thing they did was call a press conference in which they blamed Hoffman for her own death, stating that the arrangement she made with the police was consistent with department protocol, and that she agreed to meet with the dealers in a different location than the one previously agreed upon.

After public outrage, the city is now walking that back a bit, and has asked Florida’s attorney general to look into the Tallahassee Police Department’s procedures for dealing with drug informants. In the meantime, add Hoffman’s name to ever-growing list of non-violent, non-threatening Americans killed by the drug war.

Doubts About Dog-Slaughtering Drug Raid

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:50:00 EDT

Police are starting to express some doub t about the violent drug raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo, his wife, and her mother after they were mailed a package containing marijuana:

The raid, conducted jointly with county police narcotics officers, took place after officers saw Calvo bring a package containing more than 30 pounds of marijuana from his front porch into his house. They had been tracking the package since police dogs sniffed out the presence of drugs at a shipping facility in Arizona.
The package was addressed to Trinity Tomsic, Calvo's wife. But law enforcement sources said last week that they are now investigating the possibility that the mayor and his wife were unwitting recipients and that a deliveryman might have intended to intercept the package as part of a drug smuggling scheme.
The package landed on Calvo's doorstep after police posing as deliverymen brought it to the door and Calvo's mother-in-law asked that it be left on the porch. Police recovered the unopened package from the home Tuesday night but made no arrests. Calvo has said he was interrogated for hours while handcuffed and surrounded by the bloody bodies of his dogs.

So far there have been no arrests, and the police seem to be backing down from the idea that the mayor and his wife are drug dealers. If it's true that they aren't, I'm sure we'll soon hear lots of apologies to the mayor for not being more careful and thorough, given his esteemed position.

The real question is whether there will be any discussion over the appropriateness of sending a SWAT team into any private home, handcuffing the occupants at gunpoint, and slaughtering the family pets—all over the mere receipt of a mailed package of weed. I doubt it.

Even if hizzoner turns out to be guilty, it's always worth contextualizing these cases: We've reached the point where it's commonplace for the government to wage violent, confrontational invasions of private homes over the suspicion of possession of the dried leaves of a plant.

If Using Drugs Is Not a Crime, Neither Is Helping People Use Drugs

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:35:00 EDT

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has reiterated her support for decriminalizing possession of drugs for personal use. Her rationale features the traditional distinction between drug users, who are equated with addicts and described as victims, and drug suppliers, who are treated as predators deserving harsh punishment:

"I don't like it when people easily condemn someone who has an addiction as if he were a criminal, as if he were a person who should be persecuted," she told a meeting of the National Investigation into the Consumption of Alcohol, Tobacco, Psychopharmaceuticals and Illegal Drugs.
"Those who should be persecuted are those who sell the substances, those who give it away, those who traffic in it."...
"Decriminalization of the consumer should include what are called second-generation human rights, but at the same time there should be a strong policy of prevention, so that no one falls in the situation of consuming any substance," said Anibal Fernandez, the minister of security and justice.

"Falls into the situation"? Is that how drug use typically occurs? Drug markets exist because people like to use drugs. If the government insists on treating use of certain arbitrarily chosen intoxicants as a crime, drug dealers are properly viewed as aiders and abettors. Once the government no longer treats drug use as a crime, the rationale for treating drug selling as a crime should disappear.

Although the policy De Kirchner proposes certainly sounds better than the status quo, her reasoning closes the door to further reform. I prefer the way Barney Frank explained his marijuana decriminalization bill at a press conference last week:

The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government's business. I don't think it is the government's business to tell you how to spend your leisure time.

Last April I addressed the user/dealer distinction in a Los Angeles Times debate with the Heritage Foundation's Charles Stimson.

[Thanks to Tony Newman at the Drug Policy Alliance for the tip.]

Penalty Strokes

info@reason.com (Jeff Taylor) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Rumors that a certain athlete was cheating were flying thick earlier this month at the United States Olympic swimming trials. She was too fast, too good. She simply turned in much better times than anyone thought she was capable of. She might make the team for the trip to Beijing, commenters said, but her steak wouldn't last.

Sure enough, last week a member of the U.S. women's swim team tested positive for a banned substance. When one test came back positive, Jessica Hardy stayed in California while the rest of team headed for Singapore to train. Hardy says she is innocent and has filed an appeal. Meanwhile, the rumors about Dara Torres continue unabated.

The Dara Torres drama has been unfolding over the past year. Her bid for a fifth trip to the Olympics was jump-started with a win in the 100-meter freestyle at the U.S. nationals last August. Almost immediately began speculation that the 41-year-old recent mother had to be cheating.

But then the sporting world's obsession with rooting out performance enhancing drugs took a weird turn. Taking and passing drug tests did not clear Torres of the allegations. Nor did her volunteering to participate in a pilot program which tests both blood and urine for signs of doping matter. Her performance was simply decreed too good not to have been the product of cheating. This is not even guilty until proven innocent; this is guilty with no hope of parole.

ESPN columnist Pat Forde recently gave form and substance to the widespread belief in the sporting press that Torres just had to be cheating. Forde wrote that Torres' performance "made me wonder whether too good to be true is the same thing as too good to be clean."

Incredibly, Forde said that baseball's various drug scandals make him suspicious of Torres's late-career boost. The next time a 40-year-old mom gets a strikeout in a MLB game, I'll perhaps see Forde's point. But there is a bigger fiction at work.

There is much less certitude about how the human body works than those who are busy defining the limits of human potential assume. This is especially true at the relatively novel intersection of sports science, top female athletes, and pregnancy. The massive natural doses of hormones Torres received during pregnancy, ones intended to loosen the pelvic girdle and make the delivery of a child easier for every mother, may have also had the effect of leaving Torres more flexible in all of her joints.

The advantages of motherhood might be all psychological, yet very real nonetheless. Certainly the sports comeback meme routinely features a mental and emotional component.

Besides, the Official Feel Good Story of MLB this year has been the resurrection of Josh Hamilton. The former number one overall draft pick, who spent a couple years digging ditches after blowing almost $4 million on a cocaine addiction, was an All-Star just a couple weeks ago. Hamilton's sober status is confirmed with regular urine tests, the negative results of which are taken at face-value. At every opportunity, Hamilton credits his religious faith and his wife with turning his life and career around.

With that, Hamilton joins former NFL and Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner, who came from absolutely nowhere to guide the St. Louis Rams' Greatest Show on Turf to a title. His absurd fairy-tale story was not doubted as the likely product of cheating. Athletes like Hamilton and Warner routinely tout a change in personal outlook or relationships as having a profoundly positive impact on their performance.

With these examples in mind, it seems totally plausible that Dara Torres, happy mother of a two-year-old girl, has found a focus and sense of well-being that she might not have previously. Here is where it becomes clear why Forde and other Torres doubters like to portray swimming as primarily a function of lung capacity. Admitting that the ability to focus and maintain a peace of mind might boost performance undermines the case against Torres.

Fortunately for her, swimming is not just about lungs. Body control and consistency of stroke matter. Think of all the things that can go wrong with a golf swing. Now imagine aiming to take the perfect swing several times a second. In short, perhaps the 41-year-old Torres is finally the swimmer she was always capable of being.

The Pat Forde camp flatly rejects this possibility. Of Torres beating swimmers half her age, "It shouldn't even be possible for a woman in her 40s."

Exactly. Catching a glimpse of the impossible is precisely what the ancient Greeks sought out in sport. Good luck in Beijing, Dara.

Jeff Taylor writes from North Carolina.

Mayor's Dogs Killed in Drug Raid

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:21:00 EDT

A Prince George's County, Maryland SWAT team raided the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last night, shooting and killing his two black labs in the process.

"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don't think they really ever considered that we weren't."
Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he -- wearing only underwear and socks -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs' carcasses and pools of the dogs' blood, Calvo said.
Spokesmen for the Sheriff's Office and Prince George's police expressed regret yesterday that the mayor's dogs were killed. But they defended the way the raid was carried out, saying it was proper for a case involving such a large amount of drugs.

Well no, it isn't, unless there's reason to believe that the mayor, his wife, and his mother-in-law are violent people capable of killing cops who might have served the warrant in a less confrontational manner. The possibility of the mayor or his wife disposing of the drugs doesn't seem likely, either, unless the family owns an industrial-strength toilet: The raid commenced after police began tracking a package filled with 30 pounds marijuana originating in Arizona that was eventually delivered to the mayor's wife.

Local police are angry that they weren't notified first:

"You can't tell me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn't have been able to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his confidence and enter the residence," Murphy said. "It would not have been a necessity to shoot and kill this man's dogs."

It's worth emphasizing that these were labs. Not the most intimidating dog in the world. Of course, offing the dog is almost standard procedure in these things, now.

On the other hand, maybe once a few public officials feel the brunt end of the militarized drug war, we'll get some real discussion about whether it's all really necessary.

Now Playing at Reason.tv:

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:30:00 EDT

...

Why Smoking Pot Is Like Sex With a 10-Year-Old Girl

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:20:00 EDT

A recent interview with deputy drug czar Scott Burns by the Arcata Eye, a Northern California newspaper, provides some insight into the quality of thought underlying the war on drugs. Asked about "chemotherapy patients who would tell you that [marijuana] is the only thing that suppresses their nausea and gives them an appetite," Burns says:

Anybody can say something makes me feel better anecdotally. And I hear that a lot. "Marijuana is the only thing that makes me feel good." I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well.

Bear in mind that Burns is not talking about people who get doctor's recommendations to take marijuana for something vague and hard to verify like "anxiety and depression." He is talking about cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and it's indisputable that marijuana helps relieve their nausea and restore their appetites. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of THC, marijuana's main active ingredient, for that very purpose, based on controlled, double-blind clinical trials. There are various reasons why some patients prefer smoked (or vaporized) marijuana to the FDA-approved capsules containing synthetic THC, including easier absorption and better control over dosage, and most drug warriors would say those reasons are not strong enough to justify allowing the medical use of marijuana. But to suggest there's no scientific evidence that marijuana is an effective anti-emetic you'd have to be utterly uninformed, egregiously dishonest, or just plain stupid.

I'm not sure which category Burns falls into, but the rest of the interview provides further evidence on that score. Asked how the American tradition of "freedom and self-determination" can be reconciled with "the government telling us what we can ingest and what we can't," Burns says:

On some issues that affect all of us for the good of the order we have to come to some consensus. And not everybody's happy, are they? And every time we don't get to do what we want... I know there are states where they really really like to marry young girls, 12, 11, or 10, and they would argue to you, "How dare the federal government preclude us from engaging in certain activities?" Well, in some instances we just say your, quote, "constitutional rights" and your freedom to do certain things gets trumped by the rest of us who say, "You know that's just not a good idea."

In short, pot smokers should be treated like child rapists. For the good of the order.

[via Paul Armentano at NORML]

Can't Light Up? Drink Up Instead.

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:05:00 EDT

Nicotine Water, which the Food and Drug Administration removed from the market six years ago, is back. Introduced in 1998, the product was marketed as an alternative to cigarettes in situations where smokers are not allowed to light up. "From a practical standpoint," a company spokesman told A.P. in 2002, "you're on a plane from New York to L.A., this is to keep you from clawing the seat in front of you." The manufacturer called Nicotine Water a "dietary supplement," trying to take advantage of the relatively loose regulatory requirements for products in that category. But in 2002, at the urging of anti-smoking groups, the FDA said Nicotine Water was in fact an "unapproved drug," because "it is intended to treat or mitigate nicotine addiction as a smoking cessation product," and "nicotine addiction is considered a disease." Furthermore, Nicotine Water "contains an active ingredient [nicotine] that FDA has already approved for use in a drug" (i.e., nicotine gum and patches), a characteristic that made the "dietary supplement" label inapplicable.

So how did Nicotine Water get around this obstacle? It now comes in two versions. One provides four milligrams of nicotine and contains a little tobacco, rendering it (according to the manufacturer) a "tobacco product." The other, described as a "homeopathic formulation," contains barely more than half a milligram of nicotine, and I assume it is about as effective as the average homeopathic remedy. This case illustrates both the absurd arbitrariness of U.S. drug regulations and the puritanical zealotry of anti-smoking groups, which actively oppose safer alternatives to cigarettes (including smokeless tobacco), insisting instead on complete abstinence.

I shook my head over the regulatory treatment of various nicotine products, including Nicotine Water, back in 2001. Last year I noted how an energy drink introduced as a "dietary supplement" became an "unapproved drug."

[Thanks to Bill Godshall for the tip.]

Putting the "Blunt" in Blunt

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:55:00 EDT

Alabama, like a lot of states (especially in the South) bars certain convicted felons from ever voting again. Which kind of felons? According to state law, those who committed crimes exuding a certain "moral turpitude." What puts the turp in the perp's 'tude? According to the New York Times, the list begins with "Murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, incest, sexual torture and nine other crimes mainly involving pornography and abuses against children," but then in 2005 was expanded by Alabama Attorney General Troy King to include what the American Civil Liberties has just discovered is the following:

about a dozen additional offenses, most of them nonviolent, and several including the sale of marijuana.

There are now more than 5 million Americans who cannot vote because of felony convictions, a state of affairs that tempts me to use the phrase "so-called" in front of "democracy." I weighed in on behalf of anti-disenfranchisementism back in 2003.

Hat tip to Alan Vanneman.

20/20 Looks at the Rachel Hoffman Case

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:42:00 EDT

ABC's 20/20 looks at the sad case of Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old college student murdered after police recruited her to be a drug informant. The show does a good job of not letting the police paint the woman as a hardened pusher (by all accounts, she wasn't). When the police chief says Hoffman was caught with a "quarter pound" of marijuana, the reporter asks him to illustrate about how much that would be. He's forced to reply, "about a baggie." When he says they found a felony amount of "Valium and ecstasy" in her apartment, he's forced to admit the felony supply comprised all of six pills.

Faced with four years in prison for that "stash" under Florida's aggressive drug laws, Hoffman agreed to work as an informant. Police in Tallahassee had Hoffman contact two major drug dealers with whom she had never previously met and arrange for the hippie college chick and small-time pot dealer to purchase cocaine, 1,500 ecstasy pills, and a handgun. The thugs must have smelled the setup from a mile away. It was some astonishingly stupid police work.

It's good that the case is raising questions about the use and abuse of drug informants. It's too bad that it took the death of a pretty white college girl for those questions to be asked.

This has been going on for a long time.

New Orleans D.A. Fights Murder by Sending Pot Smokers to Prison

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:59:00 EDT

New Orleans City Business reports that Orleans Parish District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson has instituted a new policy of charging minor marijuana offenders with felonies if they have prior convictions. Under state law, possessing a small amount of marijuana is a misdemeanor that can result in a jail sentence of up to six months but is typically punished by a small fine. Subsequent offenses can be treated as felonies, punishable by up to five years in prison for a second offense and up to 20 years for a third offense. But Landrum-Johnson's predecessors routinely exercised their discretion to treat such offenses as misdemeanors. The new D.A. has reversed that policy so she can rack up felony prosecutions and demonstrate her tough-on-crime credentials:

Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney...hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys.
After New Orleans regained its title as the nation's murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.
The flood of new felony charges didn't target murderers, rapists or armed robbers— they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.

Nearly all of the people facing felony charges for smoking pot are black and poor, because, as everyone knows, virtually no middle-class white people smoke pot. One defendant cited by the paper is a man who was "arrested once before as a teenager 20 years ago" and since then "has married, raised a family and kept out of trouble." Now he may have to spend the money he saved for his son's college tuition on legal expenses. Take that, crime!

In May I marveled at New York City's little-noticed crackdown on pot smokers, which has a similar racial skew, unjustly converts citable offenses to misdemeanors, but looks enlightened compared to Landrum-Johnson's crusade.

[via Paul Armentano at NORML]