Sixes--
You have a point. After all, the remainder of the DRCNet newsletter goes on to describe the Election in terms of the Drug War; it seems we made some progress, dumping some legislators, picking up others, and passing several medical, decrim, and legalization ballots. (Including Mendocino "G", which allws the growth of 25 marijuana plants by adults within the county; the law is largely symbolic, though, since the state and fed can still get in the way.
The brightest star of the election, though, would be the beating taken by Civil Asset Forfeiture. With the exception of one or two, all the CAF reform measures on various ballots passed. I feel sorry for law enforcement, in a way. Because of those measures, many cops will have to prove that the property was part of or the result of a crime, and that the owner subject to seizure knew of and endorsed the crime. At least one limits the cash value the police are entitled to for confiscating the property in the first place. Remember "Zero Tolerance"? Remember Gary Hart? The boat he got busted with the model on, the
Monkey Business, would be confiscated a couple of years later under Zero Tolerance Asset Forfeiture as a drug boat. Apparently, the 30 or so milligrams of a roach extracted from the human waste constituted drug dealing. That is, it was worth it to the government to empty the septic tanks in order to find a 1/8-inch, smoked-out, worthless hunk of a joint among the shite. Think about it: a $100,000 boat confiscated for "drug running" for the whole of about, oh, $2.00 worth of marijuana; slightly less in 1980's dollars. Such stupid things as your guests' secret actions will no longer cost you your yacht, your car, your home, your savings ... well, they can, but at least you get to use them in your defense. That was the point of CAF--take away all you have so you can't afford a lawyer. And as Tulia, Texas, shows, you
need a lawyer; without a lawyer, you can get 435 years for dealing cocaine even if you never dealt cocaine. I mean, anywhere you can get 435 years for a crime you're accused of by one crack-smoking, arrest-warrant-issued-for cop who can provide no physical evidence, or even notes concerning the details of your deals, you absolutely
need a lawyer.
In the meantime, one round victorious does not a champion make. It's important to me to hammer home points about Weiner and his ilk. A guy named MacDonough, the likely Drug Czar under a Bush presidency (Mr MacDonough is currently the Drug Czar in Florida, under Brother Jeb) defended the Drug Czar's lies about European drug policies by calling Europeans "violent" and "inept". Specifically, he said that the Czar's lie that Amsterdam had a higher murder rate per capita than the United States ("... and
that is what decriminalization of drugs gets you!") was an understandable error. They had used attempted murders in their figures instead of completed murders. Retraction? Nope: "It just goes to show that the Dutch live in a violent society and they're inept at killing one another."
And now Weiner--MacDonough's successor--whose best defense of his boss' policies is: "Your eyes look hazy, I'll bet you're stoned right now."
We should take a page from the Republican handbook and put the new Drug Czar's picture in every paper and all across the web, asking for scandalous stories from his/her past. I mean, regardless of a person's actual integrity (though I find integrity is
not a prerequisite to be Drug Czar), the GOP taught us that all you have to do is create a question of credibility, and then nobody gets anything done while everyone's busy slandering each other.
Drug users and advocates won't notice the difference. For the Drug Warriors though, it would be nearly (but not quite) tantamount to a racist waking up in black skin in the south in 1955.
Except for the killing, the beating, the stealing, the raping, the perjuring, and the ridiculous waste of public resources, I propose that drug users, legalization advocates, and medical advocates band together and employ the Drug Warriors' handbook: lie, lie, slander, and lie.
Given how much of the media uses drugs, we should be able to finance the type of campaign needed to put this silly Drug War to bed. And we won't have to kill anyone for being drug-free, either. (I'll bet the Drug Warriors wish they could say that.)
Frankly, though, I think we should take the average sentence of people unjustly sent to prison during the War, and throw Barry McCaffrey into the worst prison in our nation for that period. Since he's committed felonies in pursuit of his goals, I think we should stick with felonies; if a first-time offender can spend five years in prison for the weight of two pennies on a federal say-so, then I think we're looking at the same for McCaffrey's lies.
To tie this into the presidential election: Florida is a state in which felony convicts permanently lose their right to vote. Recent news sources put that number at about 1/3 of black male voters in the state. Sentencing Policy Project has reported that in some states, the numbers go as high as 40% of those states' black male voters are disenfranchised permanently.
Think about that: two pennies' weight in your pocket means you never vote again. (This is the Drug War, here; I remind that there need be no physical evidence whatsoever in order to obtain that conviction--law enforcement merely need not like you for any of a number of reasons. Primarily, though, it was and is your skin color.) There are some states where I can rape and murder my own children, and retain my right to vote.
thanx all,
Tiassa
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot
