Good grief:

According to a split decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court, a person in possession of more than 25 grams of bong water that contains a controlled substance can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime.

While most people wouldn’t consider bong water to be a legitimate drug, a narcotics officer testified that users will sometimes save the bong water and drink it later. We just puked a little.

***

Here’s an idea: If you find bong water that tests positive for drugs, chances are you’ll find some drugs hanging out somewhere close by. Are we getting that desperate in these drug wars to suspect that a normal person would actually drink bong water to get high? At that point we should almost have sympathy for drug addicts.

Actually, the point from the state’s perspective is to probably harass people when they can’t find drugs. No actual pot lying around- guess what, we just made up a new drug! JACKPOT! Plus, who knows what property they will get to seize and use for their own purposes, and in the paperwork at the end of the year, it won’t have an asterisk next to the list of convictions that says “Sure, it was a first-degree drug crime conviction, but it was f-ing bong water.”

This is the stupidest country in the world. Bring on President Palin. We deserve her.

(via)

Glenn has the rundown and the implications. I think the most important part of Glenn’s piece is the recognition of how out of touch our policies are with the rest of the world. It is going to be hard to keep a very profitable and lucrative drug war going, what with all those nice property seizures for government agencies, when no one else in latin and central america wants to be as crazy as we are about marijuana.

BTW- I’m sure this happened despite strong objections from Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama, because they have spent every day trying to stick it to the progressives. Sure, they mouth the right words and platitudes, but do they ever come through? This was just an accident, I’m sure, and somehow or another they will screw the netroots this week. I mean, after all, if they really wanted to change marijuana policy, they would have done it by executive fiat the day after the nomination. AMIRITE?

/disgusted sarcasm

Medicare for all Americans!

Because anything that ticks off Dick Armey can’t be all bad!

Sure, it’ll cost money, but a couple of retired cops have an idea about saving some bucks ...

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do—for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Charming:

Someone tell Rudy Giuliani to shut up.

I just read a fascinating article on marijuana legalization in Mendocino, CA, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The county put in some of the most lenient laws in the state and various problems ensued:

Now some growers planted in town, considered declasse because flowering buds put up a powerful stink. In Ukiah, the county seat, a man was shot after climbing into a fenced pot patch. Another suffered a heart attack halfway over.

“It’s a huge problem in our schools,” said Meredith Lintott, the district attorney. “Children come in reeking of marijuana.”

Worse, outsiders poured in, some armed. In September, three carloads of men aged 18 to 24 arrived from Sacramento carrying guns, radios and pruning shears. They had read about Mendocino in High Times. Home invasions rose to 40 from 24 the previous year.

[....]

And so, in November, a measure passed to scale back Mendocino’s legal limit to the state’s suggested six-plant minimum. The sheriff sensed a mandate. Tips rolled in, and deputies saddled up.

I strongly support legalizing marijuana. But it’s interesting to see the complications of exactly how that might be done.

Update. Commenter brantl makes a good point

It’s only a problem there because they are unique. If they stop being unique, it takes the ‘touristy’ elements out of this.

This is interesting:

Crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life into the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

Four dissenting justices said that scientific evidence should be treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime. They warned that the decision would subject the nation’s criminal justice system to “a crushing burden” and that it means “guilty defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds.”

***

Noting that 500 employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory in Quantico, Va., conduct more than a million scientific tests each year, Justice Kennedy wrote, “The court’s decision means that before any of those million tests reaches a jury, at least one of the laboratory’s analysts must board a plane, find his or her way to an unfamiliar courthouse and sit there waiting to read aloud notes made months ago.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, scoffed at those “back-of-the-envelope calculations.”

In any event, he added, the court is not entitled to ignore even an unwise constitutional command for reasons of convenience.

“The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination,” Justice Scalia wrote.

“The sky will not fall after today’s decision,” he added.

But that is not how prosecutors saw it. “It’s a train wreck,” Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said of the decision.

“To now require that criminalists in offices and labs that are already burdened and in states where budgets are already being cut back,” Mr. Burns said, “to travel to courtrooms and wait to say that cocaine is cocaine — we’re still kind of reeling from this decision.”

DA’s will just have to prioritize. Also, dissenting were Roberts and Alito. It will be interesting to see how many years it takes before Roberts fails to side with the government. A thoroughly modern Bush-era “conservative,” with total deference to the government in almost every regard. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he has a tattoo that says “If you haven’t done anything wrong…”

Gotta admit, after reading the questioning a while back, I didn’t expect this ruling:

In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.

The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. But in searching her undergarments, they want too far and violated her Fourth Amendment privacy rights, the justices said.

Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.

“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

I’m still not thrilled about the notion that had illegal drugs been suspected, it would have been legitimate, but I will take what I can get. I will leave the rest of the analysis to those of you who understand the law, rather than just spout off about it like me.

Oh, and the lone panty-sniffing dissenter? Clarence Thomas.

Here.

Is it just me, or is there a really solid lack of understanding what we are doing over there and why? I understand that people are willing to give the new President some time to formulate a policy, but I’m really at a loss to know what it is. Other than the appointment of McChrystal, adding some troops, and continuing aerial missions with less than optimal results, I really have no idea what the grand strategy is or if there is one. This may be my fault for not reading up enough, but at the same time, it is not like it has been front and center. The economy blowing up and other weighty issues like mustard choices and releasing terrorists onto the streets of Fon du Lac seem to dominate the news.

What exactly are we doing over there? And I’m not saying that seizing the things that makes the Taliban go is a bad thing, just that it is hard to figure out what our big plan is in the region. Drug seizures in a region renowned for opium production just seems kind of whack-a-mole.

This seems to be pretty positive news:

The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate—and likely more controversial—stance on the nation’s drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.

I’m really not sure why an approach that includes treating drug addiction as a matter of public health is so controversial. You would think the hysteria and rampant incarceration of the last thirty years would be seen as more controversial. I’m interested to see how they follow up on this.

This seems positive:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the discussion over whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use in California would benefit from a large-scale study, including international case comparisons, to show the possible impact of such a change.

Pressure to mend the state’s fractured budget along with growing public support of marijuana legalization moved him to support such a study, Mr. Schwarzenegger said.

“I think it’s time for a debate,” he said. “I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues; I’m always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs. What effect did it have on those countries?”

I was watching Real Time With Bill Maher on the DVR last night, and Barney Frank and Fareed Zakaria were the guests. Apparently, Frank is introducing legislation to decriminalize marijuana, which shocked me, but according to the google, this is in fact the case. This strikes me as particularly good news.

One other thing- Zakaria, someone I genuinely think is interesting and who has a great show, really, really pissed me off during that show. While Maher and Frank were discussing marijuana, Zakaria kept snickering and rolling his eyes and acting like it was a joke, and basically giving the ‘Oh you crazy dopers’ looks at the audience, and it was infuriating. It was also when I realized how wrong I was in March when President Obama dismissed the marijuana question that was freeped to the top of his online town hall. I still think it was a stupid thing to do (freeping the poll), but I understand now why so many of you were pissed at Obama. We’re never going to get anywhere if everyone keeps treating this as a joke, and millions of people locked up for nothing just isn’t funny.

I get it now.

And as such, will probably not understand the legal intricacies of this case that was debated in the Supreme Court yesterday. However, I can state that as someone with an IQ over room temperature, the fact that we are debating whether it is appropriate for school authorities to strip search kids is a sure sign that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with this country and our sense of perspective, and I blame the war on drugs.

*** Update ***

Government by old men afraid of advil is disgusting:

On the courthouse steps after argument today, Redding is asked what she’d have wanted the school to do differently. “Call my mom first,” she says. You see, we now have school districts all around the country finding naked photos of teens and immediately calling in the police for possession of kiddie porn. Yet schools see nothing wrong with stripping these same kids naked to search for drugs. Evidently teenage nakedness is only a problem when the children choose to be naked. And the parents? They are always the last to know.

Where is the outrage? Oh, yeah. They are too busy protesting the fact that Bill Gate’s taxes are going to go up 3%! Tyranny!

Some good news:

Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state’s strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.

The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.

The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.

New York’s drug sentencing laws, imposed during a heroin epidemic that was devastating urban areas nearly four decades ago, helped spur a nationwide trend toward mandatory sentences in drug crimes. But as many other states moved to roll back the mandatory minimum sentences in recent years, New York kept its laws on the books, leaving prosecutors with the sole discretion of whether offenders could be sent to treatment.

“We’re putting judges in the position to determine sentences based on the facts of a case, and not on mandatory minimum sentences,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman from Queens who has led the effort for repeal.

“To me, that is the restoration of justice.”

While good news, that still seems to me that they are trying to do things on the cheap. Depending on how many people have their sentences modified and the number of fewer people incarcerated, I can imagine a drug court and treatment programs blowing through 50 million in no time. There are people who can probably speak from a position of expertise on this issue (Mark Kleiman, I’m looking at you), but I imagine a substantial sum of money will be needed for rehab programs.

Secretary of State Clinton, today in Mexico:

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said, using unusually blunt language. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

So far, so good. An honest recognition of the problem. Next:

For instance, Mrs. Clinton said, the United States will help supply Mexican law enforcement officers with helicopters and night-vision goggles and other equipment to take on the cartels, which are armed to the teeth.

“We’ve got to figure out how to stop these bad guys,” she said. “These criminals are outgunning the law enforcement officials.”

American guns are part of the problem. Here are some bigger guns.

I guess everyone in DC managed to completely ignore that editorial from all the former heads of state whose countries we have helped to throw into chaos. If you are interested in some reading, head here.

I hope a trend starts:

The State Assembly on Wednesday announced that it has agreed to pass legislation to repeal much of what remains of the state’s 1970s-era drug laws.

The proposal, scheduled to come to a floor vote late Wednesday afternoon, would be the first pivotal step in a push to dismantle the laws that tied judges’ hands and imposed mandatory prison terms for many nonviolent drug offenses.

The Assembly’s proposal restores judges’ discretion in sentencing in many lower-level drug possession crimes. Judges would be able to send many offenders to treatment programs instead of prison without receiving consent from prosecutors. In addition, the measure would permit about 2,000 prisoners to apply to have their sentences reconsidered.

I don’t have the answer to many of the current issues regarding the failed War on Drugs, but I certainly have an opinion about mandatory minimums- they have got to go. And I sure hope that instead of building bigger prisons and locking up more of our citizenry for minor drug offenses, we instead spend that money on rehabilitation and drug prevention. That would be money well spent. I really hope this is the start of a new trend. We need to rethink all of our drug policies, and I think this is as good a place as any to start.

*** Update ***

A good piece in Reason about the international drug war.

And for those of you who think I am being too hard on the libertarians, let me point you to this righteous rant (the issue is also mentioned here at Reason):

This is what happens when you declare “war” on American citizens. You dehumanize them. And you instill an ends-justifies-the-means, win at all costs mindset in your “warriors.” This mindset infected the entire narcotics unit at Atlanta PD. You’d have to be awfully naive to believe the problem is limited to Atlanta.

Officers Junnier, Smith, and Tesler are going to prison. But you could make a good case that they were only responding to incentives. A lot of other people have Kathryn Johnston’s blood on their hands too, people with names like Bennett, Gates, Walters, Souder, Tandy, and Meese. They’ve been ratcheting up the war rhetoric of drug prohibition for 30 years. It boggles my mind that I’m “known” for this issue. For this to even be an issue, we had to have reached the point where most of America is now accustomed to the notion that state agents dressed in battle garb can and will tear down the doors of private homes in the middle of the night for nothing more than mere possession of psychoactive substances. And most of the time, they do it under the full color of law.

***

These cops were evil. But they worked within an evil system that’s not only immoral on its face, but is rife with bad incentives and plays to the worst instincts in human nature.

And he is 100% right. It is absolutely insane that he is one of only a vocal few who are loudly saying this. It just makes no sense.