LEAP asks Obama if "We do big things" on drug policy

Retired Deputy Sheriff McKenzie Allen (Los Angeles County, CA, and King County, WA), a LEAP member, addresses the President in 30 seconds on YouTube to ask if he will consider studying legalization, regulation and control of drugs to reduce violence and save lives.

The President is taking questions from the public such as this to be addressed on Jan. 27, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. EST to be streamed live on youTube. Mr. Allen's video received more votes than any other submitted question in on-line voting.

LEAP is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Tom Angell, Media Director for LEAP, notes that President Obama has treated previous questions along these lines as a joke. LEAP Executive Director, retired Maryland State Police Major Neill Franklin, noting that close friends of his have been murdered while investigating drug cases, says this is "not a laughing matter, and the president should not treat it as such."

Tune in and see if the White House and the President, when it comes to fixing our failed drug policy, is able to say "We Do Big Things!"

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Comment on Tucson shooting and murders

David Brooks is correct in noting that commentators who attribute the Tucson killings and shooting of Rep. Gabriele Giffords to the political climate are full of it. From Sheriff Gupnick on, commentators have been offering a hypothesis that political rhetoric encourage Jared Loughner to go on a rampage against the Congresswoman.

Liberals who believe in "evidence-based" policy making ought to be ashamed of themselves if they make such assertions.

Loughner is mentally ill Whether he is so insane that he cannot be held criminally responsible is a question that will be open for some time. But there is little doubt that that he is seriously mentally ill. His actions are not those grounded in politics.

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The Young Activists of SSDP: Budding Prospects

Aaron Houston, the Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, has written the cover story of the next issue of The Nation magazine.

It is a sophisticated overview of the evolving political legitimacy of the movement to legalize the social use of marijuana.

California's Proposition 19 received 46.5 percent of the vote, more votes than any of the Republican state-wide candidates. A post-election poll reported that about 31 percent of those who voted for the Republican candidate for Governor voted for Prop. 19. And about 30 percent of those who voted against Prop. 19, actually favor legalization of marijuana, but did not like the language of the proposition. Even the leading spokespersons opposing Prop. 19 determined they had to concede that they supported legalization but argued that this proposition was a legal nightmare, etc.

Aaron describes the enthusiasm that SSDP activists are bringing to the planning of 2012 ballot initiatives in Colorado as well as California.

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American Prospect: Special Report on Mass Incarceration

American Prospect magazine has just published a special report on "Mass Incarceration."

Mark Kleiman writes that African-Americans and the poor suffer from both too much punishment, and not enough effective crime control. He argues, as he does in his book, When Brute Force Fails, that well-designed community control programs work. That means that there must be sanctions for breaking the rules quickly imposed. He argues that effective crime control involves finding a tipping point in changing the behavior of potential offenders by concentrating the sanctions. Instead of random punishment, people will conform if they know they will be punished.

An example of this is the behavior around speed cameras. I drive by a half dozen or so locations in a typical week where there are speed cameras. Everyone slows down, knowing that there, at least, there is a sanction for speeding. Typically these are near schools. However, when drivers know that speeding enforcement is random, as it is on most highways, the speed limit is practically nonexistent. Mark is a proponent of Operation HOPE, a probation enforcement program in Hawai'i, pioneered by Judge Steven Alm. (As a matter of prideful disclosure, CJPF helped finance the peer review of Mark's book.)

Michelle Alexander's outstanding article is a modification of a Constitution Day speech about the role of mass incarceration in keeping people of color, primarily African-Americans in second class status in the United States. Her speech introduces her outstanding new book, The New Jim Crow. The primary driver of mass incarceration is our prohibition drug policy, and she argues that anyone concerned with racial justice now, must be working to end the "war on drugs."

Vanessa Gregory writes about the failings of the indigent defense system in America. Her critique is right on. She notes the value of training for the young attorneys who work as public defenders. I served as public defender for three years before I moved to Washington, D.C. Attending the NORML Legal Committee continuing legal education programs in 1976, 1977, and 1978 were invaluable.

Kara Gotsch, from The Sentencing Project, argues that there is an emerging bipartisan movement for less severe sentencing.

Journalist Sasha Abramsky writes the now familiar story of "problem solving courts," typified by drug court, which data shows are effective in changing behavior. He is careful to relate the criticisms of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers that such courts are often cavalier in their lack of consideration of the the constitutional rights of accused persons. Perhaps what is ultimately most disturbing is the very small number of defendants who benefit compared to the large population of drug dependent or otherwise law-breaking that could benefit from treatment, counseling, job training, etc.

Steven Hawkins from the NAACP writes with great power about the enormous impact on public education due to the increased expenditures on prisons. In 2008-2009, for example, in two-thirds of the states, there was more spent on corrections and less spent on education than the year before.

He tells how in Philadelphia, PA in 2009 as the school system struggled to deal with a $147 million shortfall, the taxpayers were spending $290 million to keep the young people from 11 Philadelphia neighborhoods in prison.


As you think about how your tax dollars are going to be spent this year, and how services important to you are likely to be cut -- from ambulances, to public schools, to parks, to pot hole repair -- simply consider how much money is being wasted in old-fashioned criminal justice programs. Don't let your public officials get way with saying, "We are going to have cut everything, but of course, not public safety." Public safety is a field of public service that is just as incompetently and inefficiently managed as any other -- if not more so!

Thank you, American Prospect, for a stimulating special report.

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DEA moves to ban synthetic cannabinoids sold as "K2" and "Spice"

DEA announced it is going to ban 5 synthetic cannabinoids using emergency powers Congress granted in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (21 U.S.C. 811(h)). (Yes, I handled this legislation.)

Does the government have any scientific burden of proof to demonstrate danger or harmfulness before it bans a product?

What, exactly, is the evidence that these synthetic cannabinoids are harmful? There are news reports that some poison control centers report that they have had telephone calls from persons saying that they are having some kind of reaction to ingesting something that they report to be K2 or Spice. Of course, the callers have no certainty about what they in fact have ingested. These are completely unverified anecdotes by persons who are in fear.

Considering that K2 and Spice are legal and cannabis is illegal, some persons may be selling cannabis claiming it is K2 or Spice to minimize their risk of arrest, and the demand is probably higher since buyers will believe what they have acquired is not contraband and won’t get them into trouble. An unethical drug seller may be selling Cannabis as K2 or Spice to maximize profit.

Considering that a feature of K2 and Spice is that they supposedly are not detected in the usual drug screens of probation departments or the military, K2 and Spice are much more valuable to many customers that cannabis. Again, an unethical drug seller may be selling Cannabis as K2 or Spice to maximize profit. Of course this lack of routine and inexpensive detectability really annoys drug court judges, probation officers, etc.

Someone may have a joint or pipe passed to them and told it is K2 or Spice, but it may actually be Cannabis.

It is entirely plausible that some or many of those who are calling poison control centers with reports of adverse reactions are reporting reactions to strong forms of Cannabis. After all, the government says there are thousands of reports of adverse reactions to very potent forms of cannabis every year, and certainly some of those result in calls to poison control centers.

To summarize, the government is attempting to ban a legal substance on the basis of unsubstantiated second hand claims that unidentified materials are causing unspecified and unquantified harms.

It may be the K2 or Spice are causing problems, but the government has not offered any legitimate scientific evidence that this is the case.

Anyone who has picked up High Times over the past 25 years or so, has encountered ads for “legal highs.” Most readers assumed that these ads are bogus rip offs. Many people have also assumed that K2 and Spice were equally bogus rip offs. DEA’s action today will establish K2 and Spice as drugs that people can get high on. The ban is being reported from The Wall Street Journal to WTOP radio.

DEA has no evidence that K2 or Spice is harmful, but state legislators are passing bans based on unverified anecdotes. DEA is being embarrassed by questions about why it has not banned them.

DEA’s ban is being conducted in manner that is almost exactly like the situation in 1985 when DEA banned MDMA on a temporary basis. Then, instead of following the scientifically based administrative process for determining appropriate scheduling (21 U.S.C. 811 (a) - (c)), DEA used its power to ban a chemical on a temporary basis. At that time, DEA’s action took an almost completely unknown compound, used in a very small subculture, and through its press releases and banning transformed it into a global brand, ecstasy! Instead of following the advice of doctors and scientists and scheduling MDMA as a medicinal compound, DEA’s emergency scheduling on schedule I glorified the potency of MDMA. DEA is shamefully, once again advancing its institutional agenda at the expense of public safety and due process of law.

Penn State Professor Michael Kenney explained this dynamic succinctly in his excellent book, From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. In describing the way in which the drug bureaucracy makes sense of the intelligence that it gathers, Kenney explains,

“Prosecutors construct plausible narratives of criminal activity that satisfy the evidentiary standards of trial law procedure, convince jurors to convict defendants, and secure additional resources to continue their efforts. Policymakers create memorable narratives of organized criminality that capture the public interest, build support for bureaucratic and legislative agendas, and communicates messages laced with political symbolism that the United States is fighting, and ultimately winning, a war against drugs.”

DEA could not figure out a strategy to control K2 or Spice, and fell back on their traditional failed strategy. Sadly, this is the completely expected reaction of a bureaucracy like DEA. This action is another example of why Michelle Leonhart is not clever enough to be a modern, effective Administrator of DEA.

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