no third solution

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Category Archives: Drug War Rants

Medical Pot Clinics Raided in Michigan

August 27th, 2010

I suppose it was only a matter of time, given that this sort of thing has happened everywhere pot has been legalized for medicinal purposes…

On Wednesday night, two medical marijuana dispensary in Ferndale and Waterford, Michigan, were raided. Interestingly enough, Ferndales mayor was surprised by the raid, citing the fact that Clinical Relief (the city’s only licensed dispensary) was in “full compliance” and that there had been no complaints, “zero problems” with the clinic.

pot bustOne man who called a local talk-radio show this morning witnessed the raid on his drive home from work. He said he thought it was a hostage situation or something, and didn’t learn the truth until he read about it in the paper yesterday. According to his account, law enforcement was in full commando attire with ski masks and automatic weapons.

Ryan Richmond, co-owner of Clinical Relief, described the raid thusly:

They had patients on the ground. There were cancer patients on the ground, senior citizens on the ground and staff on the ground. They raided all of our partners’ homes while their kids were home. They were taking their TVs like we were drug dealers.

Allegedly this raid had to happen because the dispensary may have been distributing reefer to people without the proper paperwork (a claim that the owners deny). So, this is essentially a licensing issue — and it’s now OK I guess to send SWAT teams for that. There is no indication in any of the sources I’ve read to suggest that they were backed by a violent gang of uzi-wielding rastafarians, or anything else that would warrant assault weapons and commando attire.

Richmond continued,

…I heard them say they want a test case. That’s what a detective said at the store.

A “test case”. That makes sense in light of Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard’s vendetta against the demon weed. As I’ve noted previously (see here) Bouchard is not at all interested in the will of the people when his own personal agenda is at stake, and he has said as much. In a better world it would be grounds for popular revolt, but at the very least should be grounds for immediate dismissal. But I digress.

Citing an (admittedly) unscientific poll when this was still a ballot issue, I said at the time that Bouchard’s outpsoken disregard for the will of the people is evidence that he has somehow managed to lodge his head inside his anus. Then, in November 2008 when the ballot initiative legalizing pot passed by an overwhelming margin, the people spoke with what little voice the system allows them.

It’s not about what the people want. It’s not about the public welfare. It’s not really about addiction, dependency, or gangs, or any other side-effect of the war on drugs. It’s about power. And Bouchard, like other petty tyrants, doesn’t want to cede an inch.

I wouldn’t doubt for a second that Bouchard staged a raid like this, for the purpose of obtaining a “test case”, either to directly challenge the law, or more likely as a show of force and exercise of dominance, a masturbatory display of power-tripping ego.

Thomas Smith suffers chronic pain from two deteriorated discs in his spine, he says marijuana helped him end an addiction to prescription painkillers. “Those drugs kill people.  It’s the drug companies who are the drug dealers,” he said, lamenting the fact that law enforcement treats people like him as criminals.

The real criminals are all around, Thomas.  They just happen to be wearing the deupty’s brown uniforms and driving squad cars.

The Lightswitch Mentality

March 9th, 2010

An old thread on a forum I participate in was revived the other day, and I had an (ahem…) interesting discussion with a self-described police officer about drug legalization. Can you see where this is going? I’d rather not bore you with the ins and outs of the discussion (if you could call it that…), but suffice to say he was no stranger to shifting goalposts and reductio fallacies. I won’t rehash that, chances are you’ve had similar “discussions” with similar people in the past.

At one point, someone else must’ve asked him how he can possibly sleep at night. The guy says he turns off “cop mode” when he goes home, and sleeps soundly every night. Apparently, he thinks “cop mode” is a lightswitch. Turn it on or turn it off, at will.

Thing is, his words indicated otherwise—that he was completely incapable of flipping that switch to the “off” position. You know, like, everyone who’s ever smoked pot is a “thug” or a “worthless hippy” and they’re ruining ‘Merica and they all deserve to go to jail and when he goes to work tonight he’s just itching to bust someone for “possession of marijuana”. That’s how irate, how flat-out vindictive he gets when people challenge the legitimacy of a law—he wants to bust some kid merely because some other people on the internet disagree with him.

Too bad his “dickhead mode” didn’t come with an on/off switch. But I digress.

This lightswitch mentality is a huge part of the problem. It’s compartementalization, it’s what sociopaths do. It is what leads people down the path of “I was just following orders,” or “I was just doing my job,” or “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them,” and so on.

The idea that you become something other than a belligerent with a gun and a club the moment you punch out at shift’s-end is how people rationalize, how they convince themselves that what they’re doing isn’t wrong at all. When they leave work, they’re just a “regular guy” like you and me; they have families and feelings and they like baseball and apple pie.

No, you’re fucking not a “regular guy”. A “regular guy” isn’t vindictive and belligerent. A “regular guy” doesn’t make thinly-veiled threats on internet forums (he actually said he was going to report the thread to local law enforcement—as if talking about legalization is a crime!). A “regular guy” doesn’t get a hard-on every time someone says that just maybe the war on drugs is a stupid idea and just maybe responsible adults should be allowed to be responsible on their own time.  A “regular guy” doesn’t think it’s OK for people to be shot to death for smoking a joint.

No. You’re pretty fucking far from “regular”.

The “Good Cop” Fnord and Selective Enforcement of Law

December 26th, 2009

A friend of mine got a traffic ticket the other day, it wasn’t anything serious. As chance encounters with “the man” often do, this got me thinking.

The officer wrote him up for “unsafe start” or something like that, which is the equivalent of “impeding traffic”. I believe it is a moving violation so the officer can apply it towards his monthly ticket quota, but a bunk ticket worth no points against his license and minimal fine (although I think “minimal” is still $110 in MI). However, this is not what he was doing. In fact, he was attempting to complete a left-turn through a downtown intersection, and at this precise intersection (not all intersections) it seems left turns are prohibited. Oh well, it was posted, so technically he should’ve know better or whatever.

So yeah, this got me thinking. I mean, aside from the fact that every single officer in every single jurisdiction in the country has perjured himself in such a manner, that this practice is pervasively routine and accepted. Many people are content with this because of the presumption of that the officer is somehow helping you out or doing you a favor by reducing the infraction. (You know what would be even more favorful? Yep: not writing a ticket in the first place!)

This is the “good cop” fnord: the officer could’ve made your life far more miserable, but shows a degree of restraint and only subjects you to a slightly lesser degree of punishment, therefore he’s “good” and you should be grateful for his benevolence.

But consider: the officer wrote him a ticket for something they both know he didn’t do. Isn’t this “falsifying a police report”?

A common argument used by law enforcement apologists is that the officers don’t get to decide which laws they want to enforce, they don’t get to decide which laws are just or which laws to enforce, rather they are just enforcing the law to the letter (IMO this is a variant of the “following orders” fallacy). But the fact of the matter is that law enforcement officers routinely decide which laws they want to enforce. Perhaps they don’t pull anyone over for speeding unless they’re really speeding. Maybe they ignore the fact that you didn’t use your turn signal. In other cases (e.g., racial profiling) they selectively enforce laws, perhaps only pulling over speeders who are black or Hispanic, etc.

You might say, “Well, these are minor civil infractions and not crimes per se…” but you’re falling in to that exact same trap of deciding which laws are appropriate to enforce, to what degree they will be enforced and under what circumstances and you’re using only the letter of the law as your guide.

You can not use “the letter of the law” as your guide to evaluating the propriety of the law.

no third solution

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