There was a bit of discussion of teenage drug use in my post on Boyhood a couple of days ago, so I thought this story and graph about the kids in America was interesting. Kids just aren’t drinking as much as they used to, and pot use over the last decade is flat-ish or down a little, depending on which dates you want to compare.
The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
Root Cause
By now you have heard that Attorney General Holder, Claire McCaskill, Rand Paul, and others have all called for the demilitarization of America’s police, and Rep. Hank Johnson plans to introduce a bill limiting military weapons being transferred to municipalities:
A Democratic congressman plans to introduce a bill to restrict a Defense Department program that provides machine guns and other surplus military equipment for free to local law enforcement agencies across the country.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said the legislation is in response to the death of an unarmed teenager who was shot by a police officer in a St. Louis suburb. The bill comes as members of Congress have called for the Justice Department to investigate the shooting of a black teen by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
Police in riot gear and military garb have clashed nightly with protesters since Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown and at times have trained weapons on them from armored trucks.
Johnson said city streets should be a place for businesses and families, “not tanks and M16s.” He said a Pentagon program that transfers surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement has led to police agencies resembling paramilitary forces.
“Militarizing America’s main streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent,” Johnson said. He said his bill would limit the type of military equipment that can be transferred to law enforcement, and require states to certify they can account for all equipment received.
The bill targets a 24-year-old military surplus program that transfers equipment from blankets to bayonets and tanks to police and sheriff’s departments across the country. An Associated Press investigation last year of the Defense Department program found that a large share of the $4.2 billion in surplus military gear distributed since 1990 went to police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.
The program is known as 1033, and Newsweek has a little primer:
America has been quietly arming its police for battle since the early 1990s.
Faced with a bloated military and what it perceived as a worsening drug crisis, the 101st Congress in 1990 enacted the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1208 of the NDAA allowed the Secretary of Defense to “transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is— (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense.” It was called the 1208 Program. In 1996, Congress replaced Section 1208 with Section 1033.
The idea was that if the U.S. wanted its police to act like drug warriors, it should equip them like warriors, which it has—to the tune of around $4.3 billion in equipment, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union. The St. Louis County Police Department’s annual budget is around $160 million. By providing law enforcement agencies with surplus military equipment free of charge, the NDAA encourages police to employ military weapons and military tactics.
The NY Times has a great piece on this, as does Bill Moyers and company (actually a must read), and I am sure it will surprise no one that one of the driving forces behind 1033 was none other than Joe Biden, who despite the good, almost always seems to be on the wrong side of law and order issues– don’t forget the Patriot Act and the hideous 2005 Bankruptcy Act (which then Senator Obama voted against- he also convinced Chicago police to use cameras whenever possible during interrogations. Smart guy-I bet he would make a good President!), but what do you expect from a Senator from Delaware, which is run by banking the way WV is run by coal.
At any rate, this is a good thing, and I hope the pressure continues to give us the momentum to pass a meaningful bill that will get these “people who like playing dress up,“ as Ryan Reilly calls them off the street and the military hardware mothballed. Remember, it’s not just the weaponry, it’s really shitty, untrained, insecure, and often times racist cops with heavy weaponry. Yes, we need to get these weapons out of the hands of these clowns, but we also need to address the large amount of shitty cops out there. Michael Brown wasn’t killed with a sniper rifle or a carbine or a tank. A bad cop can cause enough mayhem and murder with just a handgun. Until the power structure of Missouri reviews every Vine and every picture and every video of cops calling people animals and brutalizing civilians is punished, they aren’t taking things seriously. It’s insane that they have tanks but not dashcams. Hopefully the new approach being used tonight will show that this kind of weaponry is wholly unnecessary, and it certainly looks like Captain Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol is a total stud.
But we have to be realistic. The most important change that needs to happen is a change in way we think and act about the war on drugs and counter-terrorism. The weapons are just the fruit of the poison tree, much like no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, the almost complete destruction of the 4th Amendment, and so on. Getting these weapons off the street is a good start, and hopefully our politicians will have the courage to follow through on this. I am far less hopeful that a similar strain of sanity will take hold regarding the war on drugs.
But we can hope, and we can vote, and we can keep talking about it and doing what it takes to force this change. It won’t be easy, particularly since Democrats are notoriously cowardly when it comes to being labeled soft on crime, but it can be done. This insanity has got to stop.
*** Update ***
Some people are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards change:
The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police criticized President Obama Thursday for his remarks about law enforcement in Ferguson, Mo.
“I would contend that discussing police tactics from Martha’s Vineyard is not helpful to ultimately calming the situation,” director Jim Pasco said in an interview with The Hill.
“I think what he has to do as president and as a constitutional lawyer is remember that there is a process in the United States and the process is being followed, for good or for ill, by the police and by the county and by the city and by the prosecutors’ office,” Pasco added.
Pasco harkened back to 2009, when Obama criticized a Massachusetts police officer for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, when he was attempting to break into his own home. Obama said the officer had “acted stupidly.”
“That is one where the president spoke precipitously without all the facts,” Pasco said, adding that the current situation “is a much larger and more tragic incident.”
Pasco said both police and members of the public are entitled to due process but said he is not convinced police have used excessive force in Ferguson.
“I’m not there, and neither is the president,” Pasco said. “That is why we have due process in the United States. And this will all be sorted out over time. But right now, I haven’t seen anything from afar — and maybe the president has — that would lead me to believe the police are doing anything except to restore order.”
A. You don’t know what Obama is convinced of at all, so stop talking for him you punk.
B. If you aren’t convinced that was excessive force, you are part of the problem.
C. Go to hell.
Monday Evening Open Thread: “America’s Prisons Are Broken”
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… with special appearances from adorable puppets, and clips from Sen. Al Franken, also venal Arizona pols and Florida Gov. Rick “Bat Boy” Scott!
A small ray of hope, from NYMag:
In a move to address the absurdly overcrowded American prison system, where about half of those locked up are in for drug crimes, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously today to apply its newly reduced sentencing recommendations retroactively. As a result, according to the Associated Press, as many as 46,000 inmates could be eligible for early release — with cuts averaging 25 months — beginning in November 2015…
“It makes little sense, of course, to reform harsh sentencing laws proactively but not retroactively,” added Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann in a statement of his own. “But that’s what politicians do when they’re scared of allowing people out of prison early. The Sentencing Commission really had no choice but to rectify the moral absurdity of keeping people locked up based on sentences that are no longer the law. What they did today was right and just.” (Congress has until November of this year to oppose the plan but is not expected to act.)…
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Apart from the general smorgasbord of terribleness that is today’s news, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: “America’s Prisons Are Broken”Post + Comments (182)
Getting Better All the Time
Apparently MoDo did do research before she ate the demon weed, and just chose to ignore the advice she was given:
So given Dowd’s awful experience with her overdose — which was so potent that she wrote in her June 3 column, “As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me” — had Brown or anyone else warned the columnist about the unpredictable and potentially problematic nature of marijuana-infused edibles?
“She got the warning,” Brown said. “She did what all the reporters did. She listened. She bought some samples — I don’t remember what exactly. Me and the owner of the dispensary we were at and the assistant manager and the budtender talked with her for 45 minutes at the shop.
“It wasn’t all, ‘Be careful of edibles.’ We talked about the difference between shatter and bubble hash. We talked about edibles and how they affect everyone differently. In the context of covering all the bases with a customer, we really went into depth to tell this reporter, who would then tell the world, about marijuana in Colorado.
“She got some bud, some edibles and when we got back to the hotel she had to run off to a Mitt Romney documentary screening. She asked me, ‘Will you roll a joint for me? I don’t know how to do it.’ But she had to run really quickly to the screening, and I was going to catch a flight the next day, and we were going to connect a few nights later but it never worked out.”
Dowd did not respond to an email inquiry sent early Wednesday afternoon.
Such an asshole.
What She Said
Jeralynn Merritt at TalkLeft nails what I was getting at last night regarding that idiot MoDo:
What she should have written: “I went to Colorado and decided to get high. I was stupid and did no research or fact-checking. I asked no questions. I just started eating, and then ate some more. I got really sick. My bad. I’ll be smarter next time.”
Imagine the Times sends Maureen Dowd to Colombia. Would she decide to try out the coca leaves, not ask how many to chew and eat a bushel? If the Times sent her to Yemen, would she decide to chew some Khat leaves, and not feeling the desired effect, keep chewing for hours? Tens of millions of people in South America and Africa chew coca and khat leaves without overdosing or dying, just like tens of millions of people around the world use marijuana and marijuana-infused products and don’t hallucinate to the point they think they are dying. When you ingest a new substance, you are experimenting. Do a little homework and you’ll be fine. If you’re dumb enough to dive in blind, you have only yourself to blame.
This.
*** Update ***
Pierce is a national treasure and I think I have found one of the five people (actually, Charlie Pierce, Paula Poundstone, and Alonzo Bodden from Wait Wait would be a solid starting three) I want to have dinner and drinks with:
Perhaps it would have been smart to contact the “medical consultant” prior to downing the candy bar. Perhaps it would have been smart to talk to some of the regular customers of the edibles plant. Perhaps it would have been smart — not to mention professionally obligatory — to do some, y’know, real fking research before plunging right into your own hippocampus. There are some interesting questions still to be explored in Colorado’s brave new world of legalized dope. First, what happens when legalized pot runs headlong into the highly effective — and highly beneficial — national campaign to turn public opinion against smoking anything. And second, if the anti-smoking campaign makes people more likely to treat their pot as a comestible, how extensively should the state label The Product, if only as a consumer-protection measure. (I’m in favor of as much precise detail as possible. For example, “If you happen to be a visiting dilettante from The New York Times, please don’t eat this and sit alone in your hotel room.”) But I guess it’s just easier to indulge your own fanciful trauma and then spend the rest of the column rewriting the famous Baby-In-The-Bathtub scene from Dragnet. I’m not entirely sure exactly how high Maureen got out there in Colorado but, reading this column, I am fairly sure she’s cleared The Shark by about 12 nautical miles.
Exactly.
Mo-Do in the Sky with Diamonds
Maybe you shouldn’t do drugs before figuring out what you are getting into, you jackass:
The caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child.
Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more. I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop.
What could go wrong with a bite or two?
Everything, as it turned out.
Not at first. For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand.
But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.
Yeah. I’m an old woman who is hallucinating or living in an alternate reality already (seriously, read her column and remember where she lives and her circles), so I’m going to fly to Colorado, sit in a hotel room by myself and try the most potent strain of weed possible, and then write about what a shitty experience I had and condemn it because kids might eat it.
First off, why did you do this alone?
Second, why in a hotel room? (*** Updated to elaborate ***- You’re in fucking Colorado. One of the prettiest states in the country with a vibrant community of artisan chefs, brewers, foodies, and well, pot growers. Why would you not venture out, walk around, meet some people, have a drink, ask them where to eat, walk around some more and find a smoke shop, strike up a conversation and say “Hey- I’m new to this and writing for the NY Times. Wanna give me a fun, safe, and happy experience?” They might take you to the mountains to a nice little hole in the wall bar or bistro and and you could have your first experience surrounded by nice people.
That makes so much more sense than flying across the country to eat weapons grade THC and sit miserably in a hotel room, although karmically (sp?), it is what you deserve. My best experiences in my life have been when I was traveling and just went off on my own, left my traveling companions behind, and met a couple of random people and partied with them until the wee hours. And I’m a loner shut-in, but I cope. *** END Update ***)
Third, did you consider researching what you were about to take?
Fourth, was there any Floyd or Dead on your iPhone?
I know I will regret writing this, if for no other reason than it will make my parents cry, but I did a lot stronger drugs for eight days in a row in 1988 sitting around NYC at MSG when the Dead were there (it ended with a benefit with Suzanne Vega for some charity on the final night- my google-fu sucks atm but look it up on the archives), drinking dollar tall boys and generally being a filthy degenerate for a week, and I had some pretty traumatic internal mental experiences, but I didn’t fucking get home and think “Man, that shit should be banned because parents might leave it out for their toddlers to consume.” I thought to myself, that’s a really bad venue and I have no one but myself to blame.
Five, if some asshole leaves potent cookies out for kids to eat, it’s not the marijuana, it’s that they are an asshole. The kid would probably be dead in a few years anyway, because the callous douchebag parent probably also leaves around loaded handguns (his Constitutional fucking right), owns a pit bull, drives drunk with the kid in the car, or soaks all the carpet near power outlets with water and conveniently drops a fork near each.
Six, fuck you Maureen Dowd. Go back to sniffing Lewinsky’s panties.
*** Update ***
Seems to be a mild debate about labeling. Legalization HELPS that, because you know what you are going to get and things will be regulated. That doesn’t excuse this idiotic Mo-Do column. I’ve been to thousands of liquor stores and never once seen an Everclear grain alcohol bottle with a label that said “Don’t chug this on an empty stomache, Maureen.” I’ve sipped quite a bit of moonshine run through the finest radiators in West by God Virginia, and never seen a warning label. You know why? I don’t put shit into my body without knowing what I am doing.
“Kids are Different Today”
The average heroin user is white, mid-20s, and living in the suburbs or the country (via):
Our data show that the demographic composition of heroin users entering treatment has shifted over the last 50 years such that heroin use has changed from an inner-city, minority-centered problem to one that has a more widespread geographical distribution, involving primarily white men and women in their late 20s living outside of large urban areas.
The good news, in New York state at least, is that every cop will soon be carrying Narcan (naloxolone) which is incredibly effective at reversing overdose:
The success of naloxone in combatting opioid overdoses cannot be overstated. Since the fall of 2010, the police department of Quincy, Massachusetts, the first department in the nation to require its officers to carry naloxone, has used the drug 221 times and successfully reversed 211 overdoses (as of February), a success rate of over 95%. In New York’s Suffolk County, 563 lives were saved last year alone.
The money for the program comes from seized drug assets. It’s nice to see a state AG stand up and announce something drug-related that will actually help people. Savor it, because it’s pretty rare.