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You are here: Home / Politics / War On Drugs / The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs / Genuinely Good News

Genuinely Good News

by John Cole|  March 4, 20094:07 pm| 48 Comments

This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs

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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.

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Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    edmund dantes

    March 4, 2009 at 4:13 pm

    Prisons are big business. They need customers. One of the great fringe benefits of privatizing government functions.

    Mandatory minimums and other drug war sentencing will go down hard and not without a long protracted battle.

    There’s the bottom line and shareholders to worry about.

  2. 2.

    blahblahblah

    March 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Forget rehabilitation for hard-core drug addicts until – ironically – pharmaceutical drugs come along that counter withdrawals and cravings. Some such medicines are already available.

    However, for the unrepentant drug addict hooked on the hard stuff like methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine… society would be better off if we just gave them all access to an official shooting gallery with a pile of free drugs and let them search for paradise. No free food or beds though.

  3. 3.

    Cris

    March 4, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    This is good news, and I’m not even thinking of John McCain.

  4. 4.

    Comrade Stuck

    March 4, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    First thing we need to do is stop cold the movement to privatize our prisons. If not it will become a lobbying force in DC and elsewhere. And as we know how much our congresscritters likes their perks from lobby money, at some point they might start giving mandatory sentences to jay walkers (an exaggeration, but not that much), just to up the jail population to boost bidness.

    edit – seems edmund beat me to it.

  5. 5.

    DougJ

    March 4, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    Don’t get me started on the Rockefeller drug laws. What a disgrace. Ah, what a wonderful “liberal” state I live in that keeps people in jail for life for nonviolent crimes!

  6. 6.

    FourtyTwo

    March 4, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Finally, something that Rush and liberals can agree on!

  7. 7.

    mistermix

    March 4, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Legalizing pot would be a good start. Putting people in prison for smoking or dealing marijuana is a waste of money and human potential.

  8. 8.

    Graeme

    March 4, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    I think this will be good, because there will now be room in the prisons for Madoff, the AIG board, Thain, etc.

    I’d prefer to hang them, but I wouldn’t mind some torture, too.

    Is the ‘liberal’ version of waterboarding actually bukkake? Please, please tell me it is.

    Maybe the US could make some money we loaned AIG back selling weird financier torture pr0n? Don’t tell me that wouldn’t be ‘teh awesome.’

  9. 9.

    Ninerdave

    March 4, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    We need to rethink all of our drug policies,

    This is a good first step. Next we can start by treating addiction like the public health issue it is. What we do now is akin to locking people up because they have developed cancer.

    Imagine the money we’d save if we stop locking up addicts. Imagine the money we’d gain if we legalized drugs and taxed them. Imagine a whole category of crime wiped away because people finally realize prohibition does not, has not and will never work

  10. 10.

    Andrew

    March 4, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    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.

    I think it’s really, really easy to come up with answers to many of the current issues on the war on drugs.

    Legalize posession, sale, and distribution of pot. Tax it. Decriminalize all drug use. Eliminate mandatory minimums. Provide free drug treatment.

    This would basically eliminate half of the trouble with drugs in the first year and generate tens of billions of dollars in net revenue from taxation and savings on prisons, to say nothing of the restoration of civil liberties lost in the war on drug(user)s.

    I actually think that it would be fiscally optimal to provide subsidized drugs to addicts, but it’s more than a bit of a stretch, politically speaking.

  11. 11.

    cmorenc

    March 4, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Prisons are big business. They need customers.

    It isn’t just the prisons that have developed considerable size, inertia, and career investment in harshly prosecuting recreational drug use. There’s a whole armada of law enforcement agencies which have grown to considerable size, and officers who have committed their careers to the drug war. There’s numerous county sheriffs and other government bodies who have developed a considerable appetite for the forfeitures of property and money they can bring in as the alleged fruits of illegal activity.

    Bringing all this to a halt to switch to a medical treatment-based model of addressing drug abuse will only be slightly easier than turning the ship Titanic around before it hits the iceburg.

  12. 12.

    blahblahblah

    March 4, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    @Graeme

    You combined:

    "Madoff", "AIG board", "Thaine"

    with …

    "bukkake"

    The resulting image in my head can never be scrubbed away.

  13. 13.

    Dr. Squid

    March 4, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    Cannabis (I don’t like the term "marijuana"; it’s as slangy as "pot" or "weed" and it’s used to make it seem foreign and scary) isn’t illegal because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because it’s illegal. Legalize it, take it out of the hands of the crack and smack dealers, and end that damn war on the Mexican border, already.

    And on legalization, order everyone in prison for weed possession to be released immediately.

  14. 14.

    Tonal Crow

    March 4, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    Yes. I look forward to governments (and citizens) approaching statutes from a Liberty (not "libertarian") perspective, rather from the perspective that we can pass any damn(able) statute we want. There should always be a presumption that an individual is best-qualified to make her own choices. The presumption cannot, of course, be ironclad [1], but Liberty is where we should begin. Beginning instead with the (usually-implicit) idea that we can criminalize anything we damn well please, is one of the attitudes that got us the War on Drugs, and that so often brings us new anti-Liberty idiocies (e.g., warrantless wiretapping; indefinite detention; the GOP’s (and Hillary’s) advocacy for a "flag-burning amendment", etc.).

    [1] (lest we end up in "libertarian Hell", where Joe can build a cyanide plant in his backyard and Jill can stop it only by proving that it’s poisoning her).

  15. 15.

    Gus

    March 4, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    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 some kind bud.

    Fixed.

  16. 16.

    canuckistani

    March 4, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    Man, you guys with your decriminalization, health care plans and reinstated banking regulations.. it’s like you want to live in Canada or something.

  17. 17.

    Bob In Pacifica

    March 4, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Maybe we could have a real tea party.

  18. 18.

    Cris

    March 4, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    First thing we need to do is stop cold the movement to privatize our prisons.

    Legalizing pot would be a good start.

    We need to rethink all of our drug policies,

    This is a good first step.

    I agree with all of these, but the subject of John’s post is an even firster step. Untying the hands of judges by removing minimum sentencing isn’t just about a sensible drug policy, it’s a sensible governing policy. Mandatory minimum sentencing always has been a gross overstep of legislative authority into judicial discretion. Give me more activist judges, I say.

  19. 19.

    TheHatOnMyCat

    March 4, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Hear, hear. Down with antique, outdated, draconian and arcane drug laws.

    They have become an industry, at least as vile as the one they were supposed to protect us from in the first place.

  20. 20.

    John S.

    March 4, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    we instead spend that money on rehabilitation and drug prevention

    I’m sure you feel this should only apply to hard drug offenders, right John?

    I mean, you’re not seriously advocating that we stop spending billions on the War on the Drugs to start spending billions on preventing people from smoking cannabis and rehabilitating the ones that already do.

    Because that would be silly.

  21. 21.

    jibeaux

    March 4, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    I’m guessing medical marijuana laws could change significantly in the upcoming years…. I read recently that some polls show 80% support. I have always thought that 1) you’d have to have a pretty bizarre way of looking at the world to think it’s o.k. to put a bunch of toxic chemotherapy stuff in your body that makes you throw up and your hair fall out, but if you smoke weed to help you get through it, that you’ve crossed a dangerous line somehow; and 2) just because it makes no damn sense to think that way doesn’t mean people aren’t going to…
    End result, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the broad public support.

  22. 22.

    Graeme

    March 4, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    This is one of my pet issues. I am wearing a NORML shirt right now, as a matter of fact. What else would I wear to the gym?

    I just want to point out that the last time I bought an ounce, I was pleasantly surprised to find the price had dropped.

    I mean, the war on (some) drugs has been going on longer than I’ve been alive, but potency is increasing (noticeably in the last decade) and prices are coming down?

    I know, I know… A win is always just around the corner. Just need more funding, maybe more lame commercials. Maybe even another spread in ‘Boys’ Life’ about the dangers of pot as a ‘gateway’ drug…

    In the meantime, have another beer and keep sending in your tax money! Because none dare call the military, the prisons, or the police ‘government waste.’

  23. 23.

    Keith

    March 4, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Maybe we could have a real tea party.

    You know the flack someone gets at a party for accidentally spilling a beer? Multiply that by 1000 (and add to it a bunch of stoners jumping in the river trying to fish out a bowl (HA!))

  24. 24.

    Cris

    March 4, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    @Graeme: What else would I wear to the gym?

    You’re reading blogs on the Stairmaster?

  25. 25.

    Zifnab

    March 4, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Man, if we’d known a cataclysmic economic meltdown would cause the endless, useless war on drugs to come to a halt, we would have triggered a collapse years ago.

    Nice to know the Obama Economy has a silver lining.

  26. 26.

    Bubblegum Tate

    March 4, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Wiggum: Now, what I am about to show you next may shock and educate you. Hold onto your values as we step through the looking glass into a hippie pot party.
    [flicks a switch, lighting a mannequin with a joint crudely stuck to his mouth]
    While Johnny Welfare plays acid rock on a stolen guitar, his old lady has a better idea.
    [lights up another mannequin, of a woman opening wide to eat a baby sandwich. (That’s a sandwich with a baby in it, not a really tiny sandwich.) The crowd gasps]
    That’s right, she’s got the munchies for a California Cheeseburger.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    March 4, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    I mean, you’re not seriously advocating that we stop spending billions on the War on the Drugs to start spending billions on preventing people from smoking cannabis and rehabilitating the ones that already do.

    We already do it with alcohol and tobacco — why should we make an exception for marijuana?

  28. 28.

    John S.

    March 4, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    We already do it with alcohol and tobacco—why should we make an exception for marijuana?

    Marijuana – the special exception.

    Alcohol and tobacco are legal and marijuana is not. Why? SPECIAL EXCEPTION!

    Alcohol and tobacco cause more fatalities than marijuana but are considered less dangerous. Why? SPECIAL EXCEPTION!

    Alcohol and tobacco are taxed and regulated whereas marijuana is not. Why? SPECIAL EXCEPTION!

    Why is it the special exception? Shut up. That’s why.

  29. 29.

    Josh Hueco

    March 4, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Soon we will all be able to indulge in the great pastime of ‘getting the cat stoned’ without fear or shame.

  30. 30.

    Cris

    March 4, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    @Josh Hueco: Catnip is not a controlled substance. Yet.

  31. 31.

    Emma Anne

    March 4, 2009 at 5:51 pm

    @cmorenc:

    There’s a whole armada of law enforcement agencies which have grown to considerable size, and officers who have committed their careers to the drug war.

    Crime goes up during a recession. We can keep them busy with actual crime.

    There’s numerous county sheriffs and other government bodies who have developed a considerable appetite for the forfeitures of property and money they can bring in as the alleged fruits of illegal activity.

    This they’ll just have to get over.

  32. 32.

    inthewoods

    March 4, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    I’ve got a proposal – on the left, let the NRA have all the guns they want. On the right, end drug prohibition. That way, both sides get what they want and we get an end to violet crime, endless wasted lives and the bottomless pit that is the war on drugs/prison system.

  33. 33.

    jake 4 that 1

    March 4, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    Next step: The DOJ stops storming into states that have medical marijuana laws. Obama can say he’s respecting state sovereignty and a few fRighty heads will explode.

  34. 34.

    bootlegger

    March 4, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    @blahblahblah: I’d pay for a cot, a peanut butter samich and a glass of vitamin c punch. Otherwise, I agree completely.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    March 4, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    I’ve got a proposal – on the left, let the NRA have all the guns they want. On the right, end drug prohibition

    Crackheads wth guns, what could possibly go wrong?

  36. 36.

    Tonal Crow

    March 4, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    @TenguPhule:

    Crackheads wth guns, what could possibly go wrong?

    Some extra murders, probably only partially offsetting other murders avoided by hardcore addicts being able to purchase their (legal) drugs at reasonable prices, rather than having to rob to get the money to buy them.

    BTW, "safety first" is a good personal motto for those so inclined, but "Liberty first" is a better governmental motto.

    "Government with the power to throw you in prison, take away your house and your car, alienate you from your children and throw them on welfare, wreck your employment prospects, kick your spouse out on the street, bankrupt your family, etc., for voluntarily taking a drug into your own body: what could possibly go wrong?

  37. 37.

    inthewoods

    March 4, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    @TenguPhule:

    Crackheads wth guns, what could possibly go wrong?

    Uh, what makes you think they don’t have guns already?

  38. 38.

    Wile E. Quixote

    March 4, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    @blahblahblah

    Forget rehabilitation for hard-core drug addicts until – ironically – pharmaceutical drugs come along that counter withdrawals and cravings. Some such medicines are already available.
    However, for the unrepentant drug addict hooked on the hard stuff like methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine… society would be better off if we just gave them all access to an official shooting gallery with a pile of free drugs and let them search for paradise. No free food or beds though.

    I’d really like to see some honest research on how bad the cravings for opiates really are. I once met a guy who was a Vietnam vet who used Heroin while he was in Nam, a lot of guys were doing this because well, when you’re stuck in a third-world country where everybody wants you dead because the government told you you could join the Army or go to jail, why not try smack. When he came home he stopped using heroin and never used it since.

    In the late 80s when I was studying criminal justice issues in college the War on Some Drugs was winding up and there was a lot of debate about the addictiveness of various drugs. Vietnam vets were studied due to the prevalence of heroin use by US troops there and it was found that most of the guys who used Heroin in Vietnam stopped using it once they got home. So much for the WoSD myth that some drugs are instantly and totally addictive and that there is no such thing as a disproportionate law-enforcement response in dealing with them.

    When I went to high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s the only drugs that were available were ditch-weed pot and cocaine that had probably been stepped on so many times that any high it gave was probably psychosomatic. Heroin did not exist in Kitsap County, neither did meth, our big high school drug bust in 1981 where they sent in an undercover cop posing as a student was for weed and coke.

    Now Kitsap County, Washington, is number two in Washington State for number of meth labs (But watch out Pierce County, we’re working hard to catch up because when you’re number two you try harder.). I mean am I insane in thinking that because high school students in 2009 have access to more powerful drugs than were available in 1981 (BC bud v. Kitsap ditch weed) and more drugs, heroin, meth and ecstasy as well as Ritalin and Adderall diverted from prescriptions that Drugs should declare victory in the War on Drugs?

  39. 39.

    Cain

    March 4, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    @Zifnab:

    Nice to know the Obama Economy has a silver lining

    Shouldn’t we be thanking Bush? We can finally fix things when previously it would have been politically untenable. Thanks to hitting rock bottom we can just get things fixed up again.

    cain

  40. 40.

    Blue Raven

    March 4, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    @Cain:

    Thanks to hitting rock bottom we can just get things fixed up again.

    Rock bottom leads me to think of the Twelve Steps.

    "We admitted we had become powerless over Prohibition – that our country had become unmanageable."

  41. 41.

    Graeme

    March 4, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    @Cris: no – I was on the way to the gym when I wrote it. Back now. I can’t read on the stairclimber. Gotta attack it. I live in SF. Those hills don’t climb themselves!

    BTW: I am still waiting to hear how this development in NY is genuinely good news for John McCain!?

    I mean, it’s his wife that loves the drugs…

  42. 42.

    Lancelot Link

    March 4, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    Next step: The DOJ stops storming into states that have medical marijuana laws.

    This has already been announced.

  43. 43.

    Dave_Violence

    March 4, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    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.

    BULLSHIT.

    Legalize all drugs and let those who can’t handle ’em die in the street. I din’t put that needle in their arm. That is freedom.

  44. 44.

    bago

    March 4, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    @Cris: Don’t knock it.

  45. 45.

    Comrade grumpy realist

    March 4, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    If I ever run for POTUS, one of the planks in my platform will be: "legalize anything that you can grow in the back yard or under a Day-Glo lamp." Pot? Fine. Opium poppies? Fine. (And before they became illegal, we had a bunch out back–very showy blossoms indeed.)

    Aside from everything else, I would expect a great stampede into bioengineering and learning about gene-splicing techniques. The seeds of the next technology boom!

  46. 46.

    Marshall

    March 4, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    Holder has followed through on one of Obama’s campaign promises and ordered a stop on raids on state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries.

    Why didn’t Bill Clinton do this 12 years ago ?

  47. 47.

    pharniel

    March 5, 2009 at 9:15 am

    @Marshall:

    Because the grumpy old men back then were still the bastards who were the fresh young face of the Drug War.

    NOw it’s the guys who were hippies and their children, so the hypocrasy is starting to set in.

    once the gen y/x peeps start REALLy getting into things, then look to see some more rational stances taken.

  48. 48.

    eileen hastings

    March 23, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    Using a herb to remedy a condition has been a crime ever since the US Government made marijuana illegal. They are busy right now seeing if they can’t make all the rest of the healing herbs unavailable too.

    Thinking that the US Government represents its citizens and is there for them is just a delusion. They look and smell more like an old fashion idea (dictators) of a few men controlling the many for profit (wrapped up in new ideology).

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