War on Drugs
Are We Moving Toward Marijuana Decriminalization?
Published October 19, 2009 @ 04:20PM PT
It was a good day for marijuana reformers:
The Obama administration today clarified its already-sensible position on medicinal marijuana.
A judge ruled that the city of Los Angeles didn't follow state law when it banned new medical marijuana dispensaries.
And, a new Gallup poll (above) found support for legalization at a 40-year high in the U.S. at 44%. The poll over time is above, those two lines are moving mighty close together.
What does it all mean?
Ending the Cocaine/Crack Disparity
Published October 16, 2009 @ 07:30AM PT
A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate yesterday by Dick Durbin is aiming to end the sentencing disparity between cocaine and crack, an advocacy group says all of pieces are finally in place to make it happen, and Gawker missed the point.
Durbin's bill, the Fair Sentencing Act, was introduced with nine co-sponsors and would increase the amount of crack that triggers a five-year mandatory sentence. Under current law, possession of five grams of crack requires judges to hand down the five-year sentence, while 500 grams of cocaine carries the same penalty. This 100:1 ratio has long been pointed to by reformers as unnecessary, unfair and racially biased. A parallel bill has been introduced in the House.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums immediately released a statement supporting Durbin's legislation -- and asserting that we have the right policy environment for this reform to finally happen this year:
"The picture is now nearly complete – the White House and the Department of Justice have endorsed the complete elimination of the cocaine sentencing disparity, the Sentencing Commission has found the disparity unreasonable, and the House of Representatives and now the Senate have introduced legislation that would equalize crack and powder cocaine penalties," FAMM said in a statement.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: Starting a Conversation
Published October 14, 2009 @ 11:53AM PT
Matt was kind enough to let me invade his blog with a couple of guest posts. My name is David Bratzer and I've been a police officer in British Columbia for four years. Before that I worked as a jailer in city cells (aka the drunk tank) for two years. And before that, I worked in a couple of different areas: air traffic control trainee, tech support for an Internet startup, fast food cook, ESL teacher in Russia, residence assistant and a few other jobs as well. This speaks to the hiring practices of modern police agencies. They like to recruit officers with life experience, particularly the kind that demonstrates ethical decision making, respect for diversity and a sense of adaptability.
In my spare time, while off-duty, I manage the daily blog for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
LEAP is a group of 16,000 cops, judges and prosecutors who want to end the War on Drugs. We don't support or encourage drug abuse, but we believe that a system of regulation would be more ethical and less harmful than prohibition.
Like my work in drug policy reform, I should clarify that whatever I write here is my own opinion. My thoughts are influenced by my experiences on the job, but they certainly don't represent the official position of the department where I work. With that said, here are a couple of ideas about some broad trends in law enforcement:
1) DNA - A lot of people think we've already seen the criminal justice benefits of DNA. However, there is a lot of good still to come from this area of science. More on this later.
2) Video surveillance - One of the best technologies for solving crime and increasing police accountability. It will become more pervasive, which is not a bad thing as long as it is regulated properly.
3) Use of force - An often misunderstood area of policing. Life altering decisions are made in seconds and then analyzed for months and years afterwards. I will try to offer “the cop perspective,” and at the same time make a few suggestions on how the profession of law enforcement could improve in this area.
I hope to write more about these topics, but I thought it might be nice to start with some Q & A. If you leave a question in the comments section on any topic related to law enforcement, I’ll do my best to answer it in my next post.
Ten Months Later, Hardly a Glitch for Legal Pot in Massachusetts
Published October 10, 2009 @ 10:53AM PT
When are we going to hear about the chronic malaise that has settled over Massachusetts since the state decriminalized pot in January? What about the wave of school dropouts? A spike in demand for "Half Baked" from Massachusetts Netflix hubs? At least a boon for pizza delivery? Nothing?
I've been watching the news, and there's been hardly a peep. In fact the few peeps we've heard have confirmed what I expected to happen: nothing. One story ran recently in the suburban MetroWest Daily News under the headline "Marijuana Law Has Had Little Effect on Schools," but the story opened with some anecdotes about high teenagers and took 10 paragraphs to get around to its point. Finally, the buried lede:
Overall, however, there hasn't been a serious problem with pot in schools.
"I thought I'd see more issues. But we haven't," said Milford High School Principal John Brucato.
A Drug Arrest Every 18 Seconds
Published September 14, 2009 @ 10:35AM PT
The FBI today released its annual review of crime stats across the United States - and there are some interesting numbers on the drug war. Marijuana arrests dipped slightly, but the new stats make painfully clear that our drug war rages on.
Marijuana arrests dropped year-over-year in 2008 for the first time since 2002, but the enormous amounts of law enforcement time, money and energy spent on marijuana busts still baffles. Police across the country made 847, 863 marijuana-related arrests in 2008, and 89 percent of them were for possession or use. There were more arrests for marijuana possession than all violent crimes combined. Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia said the small drop in arrests isn't too much to get excited about:
"This slight dip in the number of marijuana arrests provides a small amount of relief to the tens of millions of American marijuana consumers who have been under attack by their own government for decades," Kampia said. "It's time to stop wasting billions of tax dollars criminalizing responsible Americans for using a substance that's safer than alcohol, and to put an end to policies that simply hand this massive consumer market to unregulated criminals."
Different Worlds: The U.S. and Latin America on Drug Reform
Published August 27, 2009 @ 07:41AM PT
With a major decision from its Supreme Court on Tuesday, Argentina seems poised to join many neighbors in Central and South America by decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs. The court ruled that the arrests of five people for marijuana possession was unconstitutional, and the decision is expected to clear the way for legislation the decriminalization of personal possession- a reform supported by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (above).
Mexico last week also decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs, drawing praise from reformers around the world and - of course - fear and criticism from the U.S. In recent years Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru have also relaxed laws against drug possession.
These moves are more than welcome as more leaders accept that the global war on drugs has been a failure, and they will reduce prison overcrowding and hopefully expand opportunities for treatment. But they fall short in one big way: they don't address the violence and crime associated with the drug supply. I tend to agree with Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who said in yesterday's Q&A that he supports " any policy about drugs that will reduce death, disease, crime or addiction," but that only legalization will truly address the crime.
"When you decriminalize," he said "You only decriminalize for the user, everyone else in that chain is still a criminal."
Q & A: Cops Against the Drug War
Published August 26, 2009 @ 03:46AM PT
A week ago at Netroots Nation, I sat down with two members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to discuss the group’s efforts to support drug legalization. Jack Cole (right), the organization's Executive Director, spoke about the group’s work advocating against drug prohibition and David Bratzer (left), an active police officer in Victoria, British Columbia, talked about the challenges of advocating against the drug war while serving as an officer.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Q: Can you tell me about your path that brought you to work with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition?
Jack Cole: I was in the New Jersey State Police for 26 years, and I was undercover in narcotics. When I went into narcotics, I thought drugs were the scourge of the earth and I was going to save the world. But after about three years of living on the street with those folks, I came to the realization that the only thing different between them and me is that they wanted to put something in their bodies that I didn’t want to put in mine.
Everything else was the same, they had the same wishes, they wanted to make a living, raise a family, get respect from other people in the world. And it made me think that all these things I’d been learning in my whole my life were lies about, about this stuff.
…If there was an epiphany, I think, one of the biggest shocks was about three years into the undercover work. I realized that I liked some of the people that I worked on, better than some of the people I worked for. Something’s wrong with this picture. But I stayed in law enforcement for another 11 years, after I had decided that the war on drugs was wrong and the only way to reduce drug abuse would be to legalize drugs, I decided that in 1973, but I stayed in narcotics for another 11 years.
Q: David, is it rare for a serving officer like yourself to speak out publicly on this issue?
David Bratzer: Yes, it’s rare. Gradually it’s changing, though. The difficulty is, as a serving officer, it brings up some issues that a retired officer might not have. People ask: ‘Are you still going to enforce drug laws while on duty?’ My answer to that is: ‘Of course I will.’ I took an oath to uphold all laws, not to just pick and choose…But, when I first came out with this position, a lot of people at my department were concerned about that.
Q: Are there officers and departments that choose not to enforce drug laws in order to focus on other crime?
DB: Certainly in Canada, and I would expect in the U.S. as well. There are officers who make broad use of their discretion, and also as you go up the chain throughout senior management, and that’s a good thing. And the trick is, how do you find those officers and speak with them and convince them to speak out publicly about it.
JC: There is discretion. Some officers will stop somebody with suspected marijuana on them and subject this vegetation to the wind test. If it passes the wind test, they get arrested. Of course, most things fail the wind test. The wind test is that if it blows away when you shake it out, it’s not marijuana.
