no third solution

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Category Archives: Drug War Rants

K9 Officer Eats Hash Brownies, Hilarity Ensues

May 10th, 2007

A Dearborn, MI police officer (ironically, a K9 handler), now retired, is in the news today for “bogarting” someone’s “stash”:

Dearborn police declined to pursue criminal charges against an officer last year, even after the cop admitted to taking marijuana from criminal suspects and, with his wife, cooking it up in brownies.

Apparently, he made some hash brownies, and “freaked out,” calling 911. I heard the 911 tape on the way in to work this AM, and it was absolutely batshit crazy. “We made brownies and I think we’re dead, I really do…” He continued to ask the operator if she knew the score of the Red Wings game, because he thought he was dreaming. As an added touch, the officer initially threw his wife under the bus, claiming he was duped. Subsequent investigation revealed that he had used confiscated marijuana to “bake” the brownies himself.

And he’s allowed to retire with benefits – not even a slap on the wrist.

I’m all in favor of his right to eat cake, errr, pot-brownies; I really, truly am. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a douchebag of the highest order. How many people were punished as a result of this turd’s psychological projection? How many people lost their jobs, their licenses, their kids, or their scholarships?

Some classes of people are still above the law. Pity the rest of us.

Another Drug War Victim

March 15th, 2007

Government at all levels, by definition, tramples the rights of individuals. Generally speaking, it’s only a question of degree. The FDA routinely prolongs the suffering of individuals desparately waiting for new pharmaceuticals. They allow people to die while testing drugs that might prevent their deaths, or at least lengthen their lives. The state does not care about your life, or the quality thereof. With that in mind, does the result of California resident Angel Raich’s appeal really surprise anyone?

A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

It makes you wonder why States bother passing any laws, whatsoever. Clearly, the federal legislators know better, so we should just let them do all the heavy lifting, and let our State representatives just, like, hang out by the pool or something.

But there’s a question that I’ve posed before: The Temperance Movement understood that the “proper” way (if there can be a “proper” way to interfere with individual sovereignty) to prohibit alcohol was by amending the constitution. And that experiment can only be described as a spectacular failure. I still don’t understand why the standard for opiate/narcotic prohibition is so comparatively lax. Can someone explain it to me? Because the “problems” of alcohol and narcotics seem qualitatively very similar, and I just don’t understand why in one case, the standard is near bulletproof, and in the other it’s not and nobody thinks that it needs to be.

No matter how prohibition is implemented, the reality of its effects should not be ignored. It has never achieved the grandiose plans its supporters use to justify their bold utilitarian claims. It has generally destroyed families, and begat crime and corruption. Being taxed to suppor the program would be bad enough if it simply didn’t work. Being taxed to destroy families and lives, to organize crime, to sire corruption and contempt for order – in addition to its well-documented inefficacy – is simply deplorable.

Afghanistan & Prohibition

September 20th, 2006

Despite the “several hundreds of millions of dollars” that the Bush administration has poured into Afghanistan, in an effort to curb the production of poppy, cultivation has increased. A State Department official denies Afghani sovereignty even on the most basic of humanitarian grounds; denying that “excuses” like abject poverty are not enough to justify the production of opium. By all accounts, opium production in Afghanistan has increased significantly in the last few years.

“[Opium has] become an industrial production,” said Doris Buddenberg, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime here, noting that Afghanistan’s opium output this year was a staggering 6,700 tons. Rural poverty, dashed hopes for economic recovery, Taliban blandishments and anti-government sentiment “all added up to more families deciding to grow poppy,” she said.

Of course, hand-in-hand with prohibition, there is the widespread corruption, which is always, everywhere, encouraged and rewarded by the prohibitionist tactics which support an otherwise unjustifiable black-market price. People will continue to grow the poppy from which opium is made as long as there exist economic incentives to do so. As long as there exists the possibility for a marginally better existence, Afghani subsistence farmers will continue to cultivate poppies, and those poppies will continue to be used in the production of opium.

The laws of economics are not subject to popular vote. They cannot be overturned or repealed by intra-governmental pressure, legislation, fines or penalties. Prohibition’s history is a one of near total failure. There is little reason to believe that it will be any different in Afghanistan.

no third solution

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