Not much reason to be optimistic about tomorrow’s votes in the State House. For optimism, though, we can still look to the polling trends.

Scott Horton reveals that the reported suicides of three Guantanamo detainees in June 2006 weren’t suicides at all:

This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.

All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred.

This is a giant story by any measure, but not a single major American newspaper has yet to print their own report on it. We often argue about media bias being liberal or conservative, but the bias in our traditional media is that they’re too chickenshit to take on powerful institutions.

UPDATE: It looks like it was covered on Countdown on MSNBC, but there’s still nothing on the MSNBC front page about this.

Back in the 2009 City Attorney’s race, in a response to a question about pursuing low-level marijuana cases, Tom Carr replied:

You’re apparently reading from the Stranger. You’re talking about relatively small numbers. We do between a hundred and 200 cases a year. Whether we prosecute depends on the report that’s in front of us; whether or not it’s a case. Most of our marijuana cases are cases that come in when we’ve got another crime, so someone gets in a bar fight and they have marijuana in their pocket. That’s pretty much all we do.

So now that Pete Holmes has taken over Carr’s office and announced that he’s no longer prosecuting people for marijuana possession, what’s he finding out?

As PubliCola reported (via Twitter) from our Town Hall event with City Attorney Pete Holmes last night, Holmes’ new criminal division director Craig Sims is in the process of reviewing all outstanding marijuana prosecutions pursued by former City Attorney Tom Carr.

…

Interestingly, although Carr insisted repeatedly that he was only prosecuting cases with associated crimes (e.g., resisting arrest with pot in your pocket), Mulady says most of the cases Sims has reviewed so far are “stand-alone marijuana cases”—the sort of cases the city attorney and police were explicitly instructed not to pursue after the passage of Initiative 75, which made marijuana possession the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.

No kidding! So an overzealous law enforcement official with a penchant for nanny crusades was lying about what his office was doing? Who could’ve seen that coming?

Last week’s contest was won by Aneurin. It was San Jose, CA.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Video of the hearing can be seen here.

The Wall Street Journal discussed the hearings here. The Seattle PI covered it here.

Coverage of marijuana in the traditional media has certainly improved in the past few years (with some exceptions, of course). Reporters recognize that the massive chorus of voices demanding that we change our drug laws is far more than just people who want to get high. Groups like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition have driven home this point about as well as anyone.

That said, I wanted to make a few comments about the columns linked above. Starting in the WSJ:

Still, there is deep opposition to legalizing marijuana in Washington state from law-enforcement groups and chemical-dependency organizations, many of which argue it would make the drug even more accessible to teenagers than it is currently. Also many argue that marijuana is a “gateway drug,” meaning it will lead those using it to moveon to other drugs.

“What message does legalizing marijuana send to the youth of Washington?” asked Riley Harrison, a ninth-grade student, before a packed committee hearing this week in Olympia. “That you’re willing to gamble our future for a little tax revenue?”

The central claim being made by these groups is that legalization would make marijuana more accessible to teenagers than it is currently. Not surprisingly, they found a student who was willing to miss a day of school to help them reinforce that notion. Yet the Journal fails to point out that this claim makes no sense. The system we have now makes marijuana extremely accessible to teenagers. Moving marijuana sales out of schools and into the state’s liquor stores, where an individual will have to produce ID in order to buy it, will make it much less accessible to teenagers than it is currently.

The PI also lets a very similar claim stand unchallenged:

Opponents said any loosening up of the laws would be harmful to children.

“If you believe that it is OK for kids in school to use marijuana and be high, then you should pass either one or both of these,” said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

This is complete nonsense, but Rachel La Corte at the AP fails to point that out, or to present the other side. One of the primary reasons for passing the legalization bill is precisely because it’s not OK for kids in school to use marijuana and be high, and therefore we should take the distribution out of the schools and move it to a place where people under 21 can be prevented from buying it. The effectiveness of this approach can be verified by looking at the Netherlands, where tolerating marijuana distribution to adults in coffeeshops has led to reductions in teen use rates over the past few decades, and fewer adult marijuana users than even the rest of Europe, which itself has fewer marijuana users (by percentage) than the United States.

One can argue that La Corte is just presenting both sides of an argument, but it’s certainly incumbent upon a reporter to point out when one side’s arguments don’t make any sense. Even worse, both the Wall Street Journal and the PI fail to point out that there’s even a challenge to this argument from the other side, let alone that the argument itself has no basis in reality. I don’t think La Corte – or Nick Wingfield and Justin Scheck in the Journal – do this maliciously, I just think that these debates are new and reporters who cover a large number of different topics aren’t as familiar with drug law reform as they should be. But as long as that’s the case, propagandists like Don Pierce will continue to get away with making ridiculous statements that go unchallenged.

I was just thinking about Goldy’s post from the other night on the ultra-federalist bills being introduced by Washington’s House Republicans and something occurred to me. Larry Haler’s name was on three of those bills. That would be the same Larry Haler who introduced this bill to overturn the state’s voter-approved and legislature-revised medical marijuana law.

So let me get this straight. In Larry Haler’s world, the federal government can’t:

– regulate the manufacture or sale of any firearms or ammunition
– collect income taxes from Washington state residents
– enact federal fuel economy or greenhouse gas emission standards

But it’s perfectly fine for the federal government to throw people in jail for using a medicinal plant, even though the residents of our state voted to allow people to have access to it, and even the American Medical Association now questions the federal government’s classification.

What?

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries, calling them magnets for crime and citing federal laws prohibiting the drug.

Critics say many dispensaries are becoming magnets for crime; they point to some recent burglaries and shootings either at pot shops or near then [sic]

San Diego police chief William Lansdowne, who has generally supported medical marijuana, said that the dispensaries had become “magnets for crime” such as burglaries and robberies.

Knabe said he feared that, unregulated, dispensaries could become magnets for crime and illegal drug dealing and that the region could “become inundated’ with marijuana dispensaries like West Hollywood has.

Previous ordinances have failed to stop the proliferation of dispensaries – now estimated at 800 or more. Some are located near schools and residential neighborhoods and have become magnets for crime.

June 3, 2009

Four years ago, when the Los Angeles City Council started to wrestle with how to control medical marijuana, there were just four known storefront dispensaries, one each in Hancock Park, Van Nuys, Rancho Park and Cheviot Hills.

Now, police say there are as many as 600. There may be more. No one really knows.

December 9, 2009

When the state passed a law allowing for medical-marijuana cooperatives in 2004, Los Angeles never set forth guidelines for how they should operate. That led to the rampant growth of dispensaries: The number in the city is estimated at 1,000, making medical marijuana one of the city’s fastest-growing industries.

So with 1,000 of these “magnets for crime” infesting the city of Los Angeles, what has the result been?

Authorities say the 2009 crime rate in Los Angeles was the lowest in 50 years, with drops reported in everything from homicides to car thefts.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday the number of homicides dropped more than 18 percent last year compared with 2008. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says the 314 reported homicides were the fewest since 1967.

Overall, there was a 10.8 percent drop in violent crimes and an 8 percent dip in property crimes even though the city’s economy sagged and unemployment rose.

Rapes were down about 8 percent and auto thefts plunged nearly 20 percent.

I’m not claiming that the medical marijuana dispensaries are the main cause for the crime drop. It’s certainly possible it played some role, but as the linked article later mentions, crime rate decreases were seen across the nation. But what’s perfectly clear is that the 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries that set up shop within the city limits in only a few short years didn’t become “magnets for crime”. If they did, there’s no way we’d be seeing declines this remarkable.

Earlier today, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee made history today by approving Tom Ammiano’s marijuana legalization bill. It was the first time that a bill to re-legalize it has moved forward. Tomorrow, it’s Washington’s turn. I think it was fitting that it was their Public Safety Committee that voted for it. The myth that legalized marijuana distribution will lead to increases in crime is way past its expiration date. In fact, legalizing and regulating marijuana is widely expected to do the opposite. Hopefully, we’ll have a genuine debate tomorrow that spares us from the sight of our state representatives warning us that the proposed state liquor and marijuana stores will become “magnets for crime”.

This is shaping up to be a pretty historic week for drug law reformers in Washington state. On Wednesday, the State House will be holding a hearing on not just a marijuana decriminalization bill, but also a full legalization bill that uses the state liquor stores for regulated sales of marijuana to those over 21. To coincide with that bill, a group called Sensible Washington has filed a ballot initiative to remove all criminal penalties for adult marijuana possession, manufacturing, and sales. If that collects enough signatures, it will be on the ballot this November. If it passes, it would essentially put the onus on the legislature to come up with a system of regulating sales.

In a previous post, I laid out my arguments for why the legislature should be working to pass a bill that legalizes and regulates marijuana. A number of the reasons for doing so are economic ones. Arguing against that rationale – sort of – is Bill Virgin in the Tacoma News-Tribune:

[Read more…]

Last week’s contest had two winners; ‘Finnished’, who guessed the correct city of Helsinki, Finland, and Dave Gibney, who found the exact location. Also thanks to wes.in.wa, who passed along how to get the link of your current view:

the “share your map” envelope icon at the lower left of the screen will give you a URL for the view on your screen at the time

Just post that URL after finding the correct location. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Continued from yesterday’s roundup, a few more items from this week:

– New York City officials came under fire recently for putting out a pamphlet promoting safety tips for heroin users. The critics of these types of educational efforts are making the same logical error that proponents of teen sexual abstinence education make. They mistakenly believe in both cases that simply giving people information about a moral taboo encourages more people to explore that taboo. As the statistics on abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education have shown, it isn’t true. And it’s just as wrong when it comes to illegal drug use. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition put out their own press release criticizing the DEA for attacking the pamphlet.

– A recent report by the Center for American Progress shows that an immigration reform proposal that provides a path to citizenship for currently undocumented immigrants and relaxes immigration restrictions would boost U.S. GDP by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The worst economic approach possible to dealing with the problem of illegal immigration – by far – is to try to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.

– I’m sure it surprises no one that I agree with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Washington’s felon voter ban unfairly discriminates against minorities. The evidence presented at trial is some of the same evidence I’ve occasionally cited here in order to point out the massive racial disparities that exist in drug law enforcement.

The restrictions on felon voting come from the Washington State Constitution itself. The actual wording of the Constitution states:

SECTION 3 WHO DISQUALIFIED. All persons convicted of infamous crime unless restored to their civil rights and all persons while they are judicially declared mentally incompetent are excluded from the elective franchise.

An infamous crime is defined as:

An “infamous crime” is a crime punishable by death in the state penitentiary or imprisonment in a state correctional facility.

The biggest disconnect that I see is that most felons in this state aren’t guilty of “infamous crimes”. They’re often guilty of non-violent crimes. In fact, before King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg started relegating them to District Court in 2008, two-thirds of his felony caseload were cases involving less than three grams of illegal drugs, the exact kinds of crimes for which the evidence introduced at trial shows clear racial disparities in who actually gets arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.

The State Constitution, with that clause, was written in 1889. At that time, not only was drug possession not an “infamous crime”, it wasn’t a crime at all. Opium, heroin, marijuana, and cocaine were all legally available to people. It’s possible that smugglers who were found guilty of trying to avoid paying opium import tariffs were guilty of “infamous crimes”, but certainly not the man on the street who had a small amount of drugs on him.

After the turn of the century, prohibitions on these drugs were slowly enacted. All along the West Coast, anti-Chinese sentiments led to crackdowns on opium. Across the country, racism against blacks fueled attempts to ban cocaine. And animosity towards Mexicans led to the federal bans on marijuana in 1937. No one anywhere should be surprised that the outcome of nearly a century of these laws – born out of racism themselves – would be overtly racist implementations.

I’m not an expert on the Voting Rights Act. I’m making a logical argument here rather than a strictly legal one – and sometimes the two are not the same – but I have trouble understanding the arguments against this decision that pretend that our criminal justice system doesn’t have glaring racial disparities. If Attorney General Rob McKenna makes that the primary argument in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he deserves to lose the case. After a century of America trying to enforce various drug prohibitions (even alcohol for a while – which New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spoke out against because it targeted certain ethnic groups), these laws have ended up doing exactly what they were intended to do, to disproportionately put larger numbers of minorities behind bars.

Wow, quite a week. Here are some things going on as we roll into the new decade:

– The two major drug law reform bills introduced for this session, HB 1177 (decriminalization) and HB 2401 (legalization), will have a hearing in the Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness Committee next Wednesday, January 13. The evening before, Rick Steves will be hosting a forum in Olympia about reforming our marijuana laws. The Seattle Weekly takes a look at the movement nationwide on this front. Dominic Holden writes about the political risks involved for Seattle-area legislators like Chris Hurst if they block these bills.

One of the contention points for these bills is that neither one adequately addresses the question of home grows. Bill HB 1177 leaves the existing language that governs medical marijuana law alone. However, HB 2401 removes that language without fully addressing what would happen to people (current medical users) who already grow small gardens from themselves, or as part of a non-profit co-op (it does, in some cases, reduce that crime from a felony to a misdemeanor). There are concerns that the state could more readily go after people for growing plants outside of the new regulatory system. One co-sponsor of the bill, Roger Goodman from Kirkland, noted this as an oversight and hopes to clarify the bill within the session. A group of medical marijuana patients were circulating some proposed language to address their concerns specific to the medical marijuana statutes, but as of yet, it hasn’t picked up a legislative sponsor.

– As 2010 begins, there are updates on what might be the most heart-rending drug war tragedies of the last two years. In 2008, a Prince George, Maryland County SWAT team raided the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his family. Police chased down and shot Calvo’s two dogs and kept his family hostage for several hours before realizing that they had absolutely nothing to do with the package of marijuana randomly mailed to their home in a scheme involving a corrupt deliverymen. A few weeks ago, a judge ruled that Calvo’s lawsuit against the officers can proceed.

This past September, the killing of Georgia pastor Jonathan Ayers was another drug war tragedy. Ayers, who was known for going out of his way to help people in need, was giving a ride to a woman with a history of drug abuse. Unfortunately, that woman was also wanted by the police. After dropping the woman off at a gas station, undercover cops in an unmarked Escalade descended on Ayers’ vehicle (the gas station surveillance video is here). Seeing people come out of a regular-looking car with no uniforms and guns, Ayers sped off. He was shot by one of the officers and drove off the road. He died after being taken to a hospital. This story, however, appears to have an even worse ending for Ayers’ widow and their unborn child, as a Grand Jury ruled that the officers did nothing wrong.

UDPATE: Another tragic event from 2008, the shooting death of mother-of-six Tarika Wilson in a Lima, Ohio drug raid, has ended with a $1.5 million insurance settlement, but no lessons learned.

Star Wars on Facebook

As any regular reader here knows, one of my favorite subjects is the intersection between the war on drugs and the war on terror. And as we now get sucked into the lawlessness of Yemen, it provides another subject matter. Qat (also spelled ‘khat’) – a plant that can be chewed for its stimulant effects – is extremely popular in Yemen, among all strata of their society from rural villagers to government officials. I’ve even read one report out of Yemen that much of the country shuts down in the early afternoon as many people use qat as a daily ritual. I’m not sure how much of an exaggeration that is, but it’s safe to say that chewing qat is a fairly significant part of daily life in that country.

Here in the United States however, and even here in Seattle, qat is an illegal substance. This has caused a significant backlash from this area’s Somali immigrants, who feel they should have the right to partake in a custom that was commonplace in their homeland and does not harm others.

With that in mind, I noticed this passage from a blog specifically devoted to dealing with Yemen:

The US must be much more active in presenting its views to the Yemeni public. This does not mean giving interviews to the Yemen Observer or the Yemen Times or even al-Hurra, which is at least in Arabic. It means writing and placing op-eds in Arabic in widely read Yemeni newspapers like al-Thawra. I detailed a golden opportunity that the US missed with the Shaykh Muhammad al-Mu’ayyad case in August in a report I wrote for the CTC Sentinel (which is available on the sidebar). This also means allowing US diplomats to go to qat chews in Yemen – and even, perish the thought, chew qat with Yemenis. The US should be honest about what qat is and what it does and not hide behind antiquated rules that penalize a version of the stimulant that does not exist in Yemen. Whether or not the US knows it, it is engaged in a propaganda war with al-Qaeda in Yemen and it is losing and losing badly. US public diplomacy is all defense and no offense in Yemen, this has to change or the results of the past few years will remain the roadmap for the future. And that future will witness an increasingly strong al-Qaeda presence in Yemen.

As we’ve already seen in Afghanistan, an overzealous drug war can severely undermine attempts to combat Islamic radicalism when we’re not realistic about both cultural differences and economic realities when it comes to drugs. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on in Yemen because if we deal with qat there the way we’ve been dealing with it here, it has the potential to really blow up in our face.

Last week’s contest was won by Gman. It was Columbus, Ohio (thanks to Daniel K for posting the link).

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Penny Coleman in AlterNet writes about the growing awareness among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets about the efficacy of marijuana in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A recent study out of Israel confirms what many returning American soldiers are finding out on their own.