Drug Laws

George Will Has Lost Count

This entry was posted in Drug Laws on by

As noted here a while back:

The us congress has passed legislation which prohibits US banking institutions from processing credit card and funds transfer transactions by once free residents of the United States with internet gambling companies.

Now president w has signed the legislation.
George Will rips the new prohibition and provides some detail on which slime balls are benefitting.
Unfortunately George can’t count:

Perhaps Prohibition II is being launched because Prohibition I worked so well at getting rid of gin. Or maybe the point is to reassure social conservatives that Republicans remain resolved to purify Americans’ behavior. Incorrigible cynics will say Prohibition II is being undertaken because someone stands to make money from interfering with other people making money.

Surely, Prohibition II is the failed war on drugs and this gambling stupidity might reasonably be called Prohibition III. Except, that as Will points out:

Forty-eight states (all but Hawaii and Utah) have some form of legalized gambling. Forty-two states have lottery monopolies. Thirty-four states rake in part of the take from casino gambling, slot machines or video poker.

Hardly seems to qualify as a prohibition does it? Nevertheless the federal action reeks of the same broken rationales as Prohibition I and the horrendous war on drugs.
When a foreign government or an al quaeda kills Americans, destroys their lives, our response has been clear and strong: see WWII and Afghanistan. If a foreign government had ruined as many American lives as the war on drugs there would be a massive outcry to obliterate said foreign government. Why do we give our local, state and federal governments a pass?

Via A Stitch In Haste.

Legalization With Regulation: A Step Better Than Now

This entry was posted in Drug Laws on by

Nevada residents have an opportunity in November to take a step to move closer to opting out of the dramatically failed war on drugs:

…we’ve spent billions of dollars, and marijuana is easier to get than model airplane glue.

Last year in Nevada, more people were arrested for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. The burden on cops, courts and prisons is staggering. I’d rather see those assets used to hunt down real criminals, or the 10 people I see running red lights every day.

This isn’t personal. I’m not a marijuana user, and I don’t like being around people who smoke anything.

Legalization is simply the lesser evil: What we’re doing now doesn’t amount to much but a full-employment program for lawyers and cops.

It is only a small step but perhaps a necessary one. Real progress probably can’t be made until the major special interest groups that fuel the failed war are minimized. The Nevada proposal would appear to eliminate significant demand for police, lawyers, courts and prison space so should be a positive step.

Via RegulateMarijuana.org

Solving New Orlean’s Murder Problem

This entry was posted in Anarchism Drug Laws Government Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Yesterday afternoon NPR presented a lengthy story on murder in present day New Orleans:

New Orleans’ murder rate is as high as it was in July 2005, but the city’s homicide squad employs one-quarter the staff it had before Katrina. Day or night, working conditions are beyond difficult.

Early in the piece the reporter noted that many think that the high murder rate, nearly double that of pre-Katrina New Orleans, is due to strife between gangs over drug sales turf. This may be true and midway through the piece one police officer is interviewed who very explicity describes the battles going on over various street corners. Yet of all the murders that are reported in the story only one closes with its cause: a 15 year old boy is killed by someone who thinks he stole his FEMA money.

Not drugs but Fema money.

However, if the good folks in New Orleans would like to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the drug turf murders and mayhem they can do so easily: legalize the sale and use of currenly illegal drugs. There are few murders over the marketing and sale of goods and services that are not suppressed by governments.

So, New Orleans, solve your drug related murder problem. Reject the failed war on drugs.

Causus Toss’m Out

This entry was posted in Anarchism Drug Laws Government Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

There are reason’s a plenty to toss out the current us federal office holders, all of them, and most of the domestic reasons get lost behind the bloody headlines of democracy’s international warfare.
Radley Balko at The Agitator provides near daily, oft multiple times a day, examples of federal, state and local government representatives abusing individuals, families and associations of individuals.
Asset forfeiture llegislation is a particularly heinous weapon in the government arsonal of extortion and theft tools and today Balko highlites a particularly onerous use of asset forfeiture:

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that police may keep the $124,700 they seized from Emiliano Gonzolez, an immigrant who by all appearances was attempting to use the money to start a legitimate business.
This is an outrageous ruling. Consider:
# Gonzolez was never charged with any crime in relation to the money, much less convicted.
# Gonzalez had an explanation for the money that a lower court found both “plausible” and “consistent.” He brought several witnesses forward to corroborate his story (in the preposterous land of asset forfeiture, property can be guilty of a crime, and the burden is often person the police seized the property from to prove he obtained it legally).
# The government offered no evidence to counter Gonzolez’s explanation.
Instead, the court ruled that the mere fact that Gonzolez was carrying a large sum of money, that he had difficulty understanding the officer’s questions, that he incorrectly answered some of those questions (due, Gonzolez says, to fears that if police knew he was carrying that much money, they might confiscate it — imagine that!), and that a drug dog alerted to the car Gonzolez was driving (which, as dissenting judge Donald Lay noted, was a rental, likely driven by dozens of people before Gonzolez), was enough to “convict” the money of having drug ties, even if there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Gonzolez.

Read the rest of the post and Balko has the link to the opinion.

Yep, part and parcel of the immoral war on drugs which is itself plenty of reason to convict every participant of crimes against humanity.

The Republican Way

This entry was posted in Democrats Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Republicans on by

John Cole’s description is pretty accurate:

The right wing of the Republican party has sold the libertarian/centrist wing of the party a bill of goods, and the modern ‘conservatives’ are clearly nothing more than statists who, rather than redistributing wealth like their brethern on the left, instead have decided that the state must have excessive rights in order to ‘protect’ us all from whatever the imagined fear du jour might be. Meanwhile, no one is left protecting us from the religionists and the the state itself.
In the new Republican era, only fetuses , tax shelters, and ‘traditional’ marriage deserve protection. According to the actions of the current Republican party, the rest of us need to be wiretapped, monitored, have our homes inspected for whatever reason without warrants, and are incapable of making decisions on our own.

He does give the left more of a break than deserved as they would like to control and protect us from every imagined ill that repugs haven’t latched on to and, sadly, both are strongly vested in many areas.

For example, the drug war. The case which kicked off John’s post was a 4th amendment case, Georgia V Randolph, in which the Georgia Supreme Court had ruled that the seizure of some cocaine was unconstitutional. Lawyers and pundits have spending many words over the privacy and search issues involved in the case. In a free country, one not proctored by the above mentioned dems and reps, this case would never happen. Unless, say, Randolph stole his cocaine. Otherwise there is no legitmate crime here.