.: Drugs and Crime

Welcome to News2020.com where we hope to serve up the latest sceptical slant on the 'Drugs War' lunacy.

"It's nice to know we caught one coming through before it made it to its destination,"
Goldenseed.co.uk/arrest.html
Feburary 21st 2008

NEW CARROLLTON , Md. -- A minor car accident turns into a huge pot bust in New Carrollton.

A 72-year-old man apparently bumped another car in a convenience store parking lot. Nobody was hurt, but police found Rodell Alton Cole was driving on a suspended license.

Police ordered him to empty his car. He removed one bag and an officer removed another.

"When the officer removed the large bag, and wrapped his arms around it to lay it on the ground, not only could he smell it but he could feel what he believed to be dope of some kind," says New Carrollton Police Chief David Rice.

The bags contained 156.2 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $1,3790,504, according to police. A photo of the drugs indicated a slightly smaller quantity of drugs.

Police believe Cole, 72, of Manhattan was making a drug run from New York .

"It's nice to know we caught one coming through before it made it to its destination," Rice says.

Search and Seizure: Supreme Court Rules Passengers Can Challenge Police Stops
StoptheDrugWar
June 23rd 2007

In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court held Monday that passengers in a car stopped by police have the same right to challenge the constitutionality of that stop as the driver. The court held that when police stop a vehicle, the passengers are "seized" and have the right to challenge the legality of that seizure in court.

The ruling came in the case of California resident Bruce Edward Brendlin, who was arrested on parole violation and drug charges after the car in which he was riding was pulled over for what turned out to be bogus reasons by police. Once police had stopped the vehicle, they ordered Brendlin out of the car, searched him, the driver, and the vehicle, and found a syringe cap, a small amount of marijuana, and ingredients used to home cook methamphetamine.

While the driver of the vehicle did not challenge the constitutionality of the traffic stop, Brendlin did. He filed a motion to suppress the evidence against him, arguing that the traffic stop amounted to "an unlawful seizure of his person."

A California appeals court agreed, but the California Supreme Court overturned the appeals court decision. Instead, the California high court agreed with the state that even though police "had no adequate justification" to stop the vehicle in which Brendlin was riding, only the driver -- not any passengers -- had been "seized." Passengers in a vehicle stopped by police "would feel free to depart or otherwise to conduct his or her affairs as though the police were not present," the court reasoned.

But the US Supreme Court begged to differ. Any "reasonable passenger" would not feel free to simply leave the scene of a traffic stop, wrote Justice David Souter in the opinion in Brendlin v. California . "A traffic stop necessarily curtails the travel a passenger has chosen just as much as it halts the driver," Souder wrote. "Brendlin was seized from the moment [the driver's] car came to a halt on the side of the road, and it was error to deny his suppression motion on the ground that seizure occurred only at the formal arrest."

To find in favor of California's position that passengers are not "seized" during a traffic stop "would invite police officers to stop cars with passengers regardless of probable cause or reasonable suspicion of anything illegal," Souter wrote. "The fact that evidence uncovered as a result of an arbitrary traffic stop would still be admissible against any passengers would be a powerful incentive to run the kind of 'roving patrols' that would still violate the driver's Fourth Amendment right."

Snapshots of the Drug War
Stop The Drug War
May 13th 2007

Day after day, week after week, year after year, the war on drugs in the US is filling court dockets across the land. This week, we visit three different jurisdictions to get a snapshot of the role of the drug war down at the local courthouse.

In April, district court judges in Grayson County, Texas, about an hour north of Dallas, sentenced 95 people on felony charges . Of the 95 cases, the most serious charges in 16 were for simple methamphetamine possession, making that charge by far the most common of any before the court. Most people convicted of meth possession were given probation. One person was charged with enhanced meth possession and sentenced to 14 years, while two were charged with possession with intent to distribute. One got 20 years, the other got 10 years probation.

Seven people were sentenced for simple cocaine possession, with sentences ranging from probation to a month in jail to 10 years in prison. One person was sentenced for enhanced cocaine possession and got 6 years, while one other was sentenced for possession with intent to distribute and got 15 years. Four people were sentenced for possession of more than four ounces but less than five pounds of marijuana; two got probation, one got one year, and one got two years. One person was sentenced to two years in prison for possession of more than 50 pounds of marijuana.

Probation violators made up a sizeable contingent, with 13 being sentenced in April. Drug offenders accounted for nine of the violators, with meth, cocaine, and marijuana each accounting for three violators. Every drug-related probation violator was sent to prison, as were all other probation violators.

The rest of the cases where sentences were handed out were your typical array of assaults, aggravated and otherwise, burglaries, DWIs, frauds, robberies, and sexual assaults. In only two cases, aggravated sexual assaults on a child, were the sentences as long as the 20-year meth distribution sentence mentioned above.

All in all, persons charged under the drug laws accounted for 41 of the 95 cases adjudicated in Grayson County last month. That's more than 43% of the court's business being taken up with the drug war.

Meanwhile, down in the Pensacola, Florida, area, Tuesday was a typical day for felony arrests in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties . In Escambia County, there were five arrests for probation violation (original offense unspecified), four arrests for narcotics violations, three for aggravated assault, two for aggravated child abuse, and one for introducing contraband into a jail. All in all, 29 people were arrested on felony charges Tuesday, with only six directly linked to drug prohibition.

In neighboring Santa Rosa County, there were a total of nine felony arrests Tuesday. One was for drug possession, one for possession with intent to distribute. Three were for unspecified probation violations. Throw in an aggravated assault, a failure to appear, a DWI, and "throwing/shooting deadly missiles," and there's your daily docket.

If the drug war seems mellow in the Florida Panhandle, that's definitely not the case in Licking County, Ohio. Last Thursday, five people had bond hearings in Licking County Municipal Court in Newark . All five were on drug charges, and every case seems to be an example of over-charging. Three people were charged with drug trafficking offenses for buying drugs. As the local paper noted in the case of a woman charged with crack cocaine trafficking: " On April 11, she allegedly was observed by Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force buying less than one gram of crack cocaine, according to court reports."

One woman was charged with aggravated drug possession for having a methadone tablet without a prescription. But most bizarre was the charge facing a Newark woman. She was charged with "permitting drug abuse, a fifth-degree felony." As the local paper noted: "Between March 29 and 30, [she] allegedly allowed an associate to buy about seven grams of methamphetamine on two occasions. Both alleged purchases were made in the vicinity of a Newark City school, according to court reports."

In Licking County, Ohio, the drug war accounted for all the court's business one day last week. In Grayson County, Texas, the drug war accounted for nearly half of the court's business last month. In the Florida Panhandle, the proportion was much lower. But all across the country, drug prohibition is taking up the time of police, prosecutors, judges, and prison guards. But then again, that's their choice because policing and prosecuting drug offenses is a matter of deliberate policy.

Drugs plan pledged to help addicts break cycle of crime
Theherald.co.uk
April 16th 2007

Every police division in Glasgow will have access to an arrest-and-referral scheme for drug addicts and alcoholics if Labour is re-elected to run the city council, the party has pledged. The programme would offer immediate treatment to addicts and includes home visits and counselling in an effort to break the cycle between crime and addiction. It is reckoned that around 70% of all cases handled by Scottish courts are drug related, with addiction inextricably linked to house-breaking, shoplifting and prostitution. With the local government election race now gathering pace, council leader Steven Purcell has also promised an extra 20 residential rehabilitation beds in the city by early-2008 if he continues in the post after May 3. It follows pledges by Mr Purcell to target social needs in the city and sits well with his mantra of allowing every Glasgow citizen to "share in the city's success", Full Cycle....

'charges of tax evasion and money laundering against Ed Rosenthal dismissed'
The San Francisco Chronicle
March 15th 2007

We all knew Ed Rosenthal was being vindictively prosecuted, but it's nice to a hear a federal judge say it. From The San Francisco Chronicle :
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismissed charges of tax evasion and money laundering against Ed Rosenthal, 62, an author and activist who has been dubbed the "Guru of Ganja."
…

The judge said he based his decision in part on the comments by prosecutor George Bevan during a hearing on the case. Bevan, according to transcripts, explained the decision to re-file charges, saying, "The purpose is this: Mr. Rosenthal, after the verdict, took to the microphone and said, 'I didn't get a fair trial.' ... So I'm saying, this time around, he wants the financial side reflected, fine, let's air this thing out. Let's have the whole conduct before the jury: Tax, money laundering, marijuana."

It's delightful to see the smug George Bevan held to account for his maliciousness, but frankly this only scratches the surface. Many have surmised that the targeting of Ed Rosenthal has always had everything to do with his notoriety as a cannabis cultivation expert. Considering what Rosenthal has been put through over the past several years, today's vindictive prosecution finding is long overdue.
He was first arrested after a federal raid in February 2002 at a West Oakland warehouse where Rosenthal was growing marijuana for what he said was medical use, with the support of Alameda County and Oakland officials. At trial in 2003, Breyer refused to let jurors learn about the intended medical use of the plants and excluded evidence about Proposition 215, California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative.

Rosenthal was convicted of violating federal drug laws, but seven of the 12 jurors said afterward that their verdict would have been different if they had been allowed to consider evidence about the medical use of the marijuana and Rosenthal's status as an agent in the Oakland program.

Breyer let Rosenthal off with a one-day sentence, humiliating federal prosecutors and sealing Ed's fate as a perpetual target.

The details of this ongoing legal saga are too numerous to list here, but the great irony of it all is worth fleshing out: after lying to the jury in order to convict him and being publicly humiliated when those same jurors turned against them, federal prosecutors responded to Rosenthal's appeal by piling on more charges in an attempt to punish him for challenging them. Today's vindictive prosecution finding not only exposes their malfeasance but also publicly reveals this tasty fact:
Breyer did not throw out the drug charges, but noted that "the government agreed at oral argument" that it will not seek more than the one-day sentence on those counts.

That's right, American taxpayers. Behold the glorious retribution of the principled and incorruptible federal prosecutors who've exhausted untold sums and incalculable man hours to protect you from your medicine. Amidst Iraq, Katrina, Medicare, etc. the federal government was trying to save you from Ed Rosenthal by putting him in jail for one goddamn day. And they're still working on it, knowing as they have all along, that this is the best they can hope for.

There can be no redemption for the spiteful, treacherous cretins who label medical providers as drug dealers and seek to deceive Californian jurors about California's laws in order to imprison Californians. There can be no redemption for them, for they are the real criminals and the story of their shameful vendetta becomes more obscene with each attempt to rewrite it.

Still, the question remains: when is it not vindictive prosecution to launch a political war on medical providers as they carry out the will of the people?

Police on danger drug lab alert
Yorkshiretoday.co.uk
March 13th 2007

Police have recovered cannabis worth £2.6m from illegal factories in the area around Sheffield city centre in the past year – and there is now concern the gangs cultivating the plants could switch to producing a highly dangerous but more profitable drug instead.
The scale of cannabis prod-uction in this country is illustrated by the results of police raids in an area that covers only communities dir-ectly around the city centre.
Investigators accept there will be other factories they have not yet discovered, and even more in the wider area of the city suburbs and around South Yorkshire.
With a catalogue of successful operations against cannabis factories in Sheffield, senior officers have been able to establish that many are operated by criminal gangs from outside this area. Some Vietnamese criminals are orchestrating the production, using immigrants brought in specifically for the task.
The cannabis plants are grown under artificial light with equipment normally used for legitimate agricultural production.Evidence has emerged elsewhere in the country that criminal gangs operating similar factories have been trying to switch them over to making meth amphetamine, a manufactured drug which is produced using readily available chemicals, Full Alert....

Abuse of legal drugs worse than heroin and ice
Theage.com.au
March 12th 2007

Overdosing on prescription or over-the-counter drugs is twice as common as overdosing on illicit drugs, new Melbourne ambulance figures show. With heroin abuse declining dramatically after a glut at the turn of the century, the city's paramedics have attended a far greater proportion of legal-drug overdoses — 6150 in the 12 months to February last year.
Over the same period, data from the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre show there were 3011 ambulance calls for illicit drug overdoses, comprising 1369 for heroin and 1642 for all others, including ice and ecstasy.
"The recent media hysteria around methamphetamines and ice is unfortunate in one way because it detracts from the true scope of the problem," Turning Point research fellow Stefan Cvetkovski said. "Illicit drugs obviously attract more attention, but we need to get some perspective on other kinds of overdose and substance dependence."
Sedatives such as Valium, Mogadon and Rohypnol were the most abused category of legal drugs, followed by analgesics such as Nurofen and Panadeine Forte, Full Abuse....

'heroin, cannabis and amphetamines'
Lee Peace
Dearnetoday.co.uk

Police have raided a series of suspected drugs dens across the Dearne Valley during a robust operation targeting known criminals.
More than £6,000 worth of illegal drugs were seized during raids across houses in the Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster areas.
The three-day operation started last Wednesday morning when officers executed warrants at six properties in Thurnscoe and elsewhere in the Barnsley area.
They found nearly £3,000 worth of heroin, cannabis and amphetamines while three people were arrested and others were given cautions.
On Thursday more than £2,500 worth of cannabis and what was suspected to be heroin were recovered during several raids in Swinton, West Melton and Wath. Six people were arrested and questioned.
On the final day police raided five suspected drugs dens in Mexborough where they recovered £980 worth of heroin, cannabis, diazepam and methadone. Six people were arrested.
The operation, which pulled in resources from all three police districts, also targeted other crimes.
A further 29 people were arrested for a range of crimes from burglary and assault to non payment of fines and failing to attend court, Full Haul....

California's 1906 Pharmacy and Poison Act
CA 1906 Pharmacy and Poison Act

"State's war on drugs a 100-year-old bust
Rate of addiction has doubled since crackdown on use"

Dale Gieringer March 9th 2007
San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday marks the centennial of a fateful but forgotten watershed in
state history: the start of California's war on drugs.

On March 6, 1907, Gov. James Gillett signed amendments to the Pharmacy
and Poison Act making it a crime to sell opiates or cocaine in the state
without a prescription. The act made California a national leader in the
war on drugs seven years before Congress enacted national drug
prohibition with the Harrison Act.

Many Americans don't know there was a time when people could freely buy
any drug they wanted, including opium, cocaine, cannabis and other
so-called narcotics. For most of the nation's history, there was no such
thing as an illegal drug. That began to change after the turn of the
20th century, when an alliance of Progressive Era bureaucrats and moral
crusaders began to push for prohibition of narcotics and alcohol.

California's law was engineered by the state Board of Pharmacy, a
national pioneer in drug enforcement whose exploits have been largely
lost to history. The board was established in 1891 to regulate
pharmacies and the sale of poisons. The 1891 law required that narcotics
carry warning labels and that their sales be recorded in a register, but
it did not restrict purchases.

However, a rising national tide for pure food and drug legislation
prompted the board to propose stronger measures to the Legislature. In
1907, the law was quietly amended without any press coverage or public
debate -- or any discussion of possible adverse effects. As soon as the
law took effect, the board began a high-profile enforcement campaign,
dispatching its agents from city to city, investigating and busting
offending pharmacists, raiding opium dens, and publicizing their arrests
in the newspapers.

The campaign proved to be the opening battle in a 100-year war that
still rages with no signs of ultimate victory.

California's anti-drug efforts go even further back. In 1875, San
Francisco passed the nation's first anti-drug law, the Opium Den
Ordinance, aimed specifically at Chinese opium smoking. Passed at the
height of anti-Chinese hysteria, the law was the legacy of the city's
shortest serving mayor, Dr. George Hewston, who was in office for a
month after the sudden death of Mayor James Otis.

Although the dens had been around for years, Hewston decried the
increase in dens "frequented by white males and females of various
ages," and called on the supervisors to suppress practices "which are
against good morals and contrary to public order." The ordinance did not
prohibit sale or private use of opium, but banned dens for public
smoking. Conscious that the city remained a lucrative center of the
opium trade, the supervisors went on to impose a license fee on opium
dealers, which the Chinese adeptly evaded.

For years, the dens continued to thrive underground, a lucrative
industry of vice and a source of bribery and corruption, like
prostitution and gambling. The Chinese were typically left alone, but
dens that catered to whites were considered fair game for law
enforcement.

Other cities began to ban the dens, and in 1881 the Legislature enacted
a statewide ban. Nonetheless, the dens persisted, as did anti-Chinese
sentiment, and stricter measures were proposed. Among them was an
opium-prohibition bill by state Sen. George Perry of San Francisco, that
managed to pass the 1885 Legislature but was vetoed.

The Perry bill would have banned sale of the drug except with a doctor's
prescription. Opponents charged it was secretly aimed at extracting a
bribe from the opium dealers to stop it -- charges that gained momentum
when the bill was obligingly vetoed by Gov. George Stoneman, a crony of
Perry's. The next session, another opium-prohibition bill was withdrawn
amid renewed charges of bribery. The Legislature finally washed its
hands of the matter by passing a resolution calling on Congress to act,
but there was little interest in Washington.

San Francisco enacted a pioneering anti-narcotics law of its own in
1889. The move came in response to a petition from the San Francisco
Medical Society, which, lamenting the ruination of the city's young men
and women by Chinese opium, called for sales to be restricted to
pharmacies and used for medical purposes only.

Meanwhile, the superintendent of the local House of Corrections reported
a disturbing influx of inmates who were addicted to the newly
popularized hypodermic use of morphine and cocaine. The supervisors
responded with one of the nation's first comprehensive anti-narcotics
laws, the Morphine/Cocaine Ordinance.

The ordinance, in effect a prototype of the 1907 law, banned the sale of
opium, morphine and cocaine except by pharmacies on a doctor's
prescription. Ironically for a city destined to become the mecca of the
1960s drug culture, the ordinance specifically forbade recreational use,
disallowing prescriptions for the purpose of satisfying "curiosity or to
experience any of the sensations produced thereby."

The ordinance proved unsuccessful. It faced significant opposition from
the city's druggists, who objected to the hardship of requiring
suffering patients to get a doctor's prescription. An initial flurry of
arrests drove the drug fiends to Oakland, which in turn passed its own
law.

However, enforcement efforts soon lagged, as police were reluctant to
hassle otherwise peaceable pharmacists. By 1893, The Chronicle declared
the ordinance a "dead letter."

California's war on drugs began in earnest with the 1907 amendments. The
Board of Pharmacy launched an aggressive campaign and pioneered the
modern tactics of drug enforcement. The board hired undercover agents
who posed as suffering patients, wheedling drugs from unsuspecting
pharmacists, then arresting them.

The board swept down on the Chinatown dens, busting down doors and
arresting hundreds. It strategically expanded its powers through new
legislation. In a crucial move, possession was outlawed in 1909. This
set the stage for the criminalization of users, today the largest single
class of criminals in California.

The board also moved to ban possession of opium pipes. It then garnered
headlines by staging gigantic public bonfires of confiscated
paraphernalia and drugs in the heart of Chinatown.

The raids broke the back of the opium-smoking culture, but the addicts
moved on to morphine and heroin. The board proceeded to launch a
pre-emptive attack on "Indian hemp" or cannabis in 1913.

At the time, cannabis was virtually unheard of in California.
Nonetheless, the board warned of an influx of cannabis-using "Hindoos"
(actually Sikhs) from India, and prevailed on the Legislature to ban the
drug lest the habit spread to whites. Ironically, only after being
outlawed did marijuana become popular, eventually being used by millions
of Californians.

To a public unaccustomed to drug enforcement, the board's conduct
initially stirred consternation. The public "has been disgusted with the
sending of spies and stool-pigeons to gather evidence," the Santa Cruz
News said in an editorial. Board inspectors were accused of brutal
beatings and violence of a kind unknown in pre-prohibition days.

Inevitably, corruption also ensued. The board's chief inspector,
Frederick Sutherland, was fired amid allegations of bribery after he
married a drug-dealing widow.

In subsequent years, attitudes hardened. As black market dealers moved
in, drugs were increasingly viewed as a criminal problem. At first,
penalties were relatively mild: Sale was classified as only a
misdemeanor. Later, possession became punishable by up to six years in
prison. Originally, the board had envisioned that drug fiends would be
treated in asylums rather than sent to jail. However, funding for
asylums was repeatedly vetoed, sending addicts to prison.

As the screws tightened, the problem got worse. Federal and state laws
forced prices out of sight, pushing addicts into crime. By 1919, the Los
Angeles Times reported a "saturnalia of violent crime" caused by drug
fiends desperate to get narcotics. Stories of drug crime and violence,
rarely seen before prohibition, became a staple item in the press.

In the end, the drug laws became a giant crime-creation program.

Before 1907, the state's drug crime involved a few hundred opium den
misdemeanors. Today, the state records 400,000 drug arrests per year,
250,000 of them felonies. Drug felons -- nonexistent in 1906 -- now
account for 36,000 prisoners, 20 percent of the state's prison
population. Drug gangs plague our cities, thousands of innocent people
are victimized by prohibition-related theft and violence, and the rough
stuff has escalated into outright war in Afghanistan, Colombia and
Mexico.

Today's addiction rate is more than twice what existed during the free
market a century ago -- only about one-half percent.

After 100 years, it is hard to escape the conclusion that drug
prohibition has failed. In recent years, Californians have begun to show
second thoughts, approving initiatives to re-legalize medical cannabis
and to send drug users for treatment rather than to prison. As the state
with the longest historical experience with drug laws, it is fitting
that California should be exploring new directions out of its 100-year
war on drugs.

Dale Gieringer is California director of NORML. Contact us at
insight@sfchronicle.com.

Six dogs were used in checking lockers
Pantagraph.com
March 8th 2007

Bloomington: A small amount of marijuana was found in a locker Wednesday during a routine check at Bloomington High School.
The school was on temporary lockdown Wednesday morning as part of a routine drug check in cooperation with Bloomington Police Department. Students remain in their classrooms when the locker search is taking place.
Six dogs were used in checking lockers, said Bloomington Principal Cindy Helmers. “They did a wonderful job,” she said of the police and dogs.
Bloomington police spokesman Duane Moss confirmed the school requested assistance of the canine unit for a sweep through the school.
No arrests were made as a result of the sweep. The student in possession of the marijuana was issued a city ordinance violence ticket which usually requires paying a fine, he said, Full Stink....

Homeowners have a right to know..
lfpress.ca
March 8th 2007

Hamilton: Homeowners have a right to know whether their house has ever been used as a marijuana grow op and the province is looking at ways to make that happen, Attorney General Michael Bryant said yesterday.
Ontario has focused on shutting down active grow operations, he said, but is now looking at how to single out homes or apartments that have a history as grow ops. The province is looking at ways to impose renovation standards on homes used as grow ops, as well as possibly creating a registry so homeowners have all the information before they buy, Bryant said before attending a cabinet meeting in Hamilton, Full Dissclosure....

.: Crime & Violence:

Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) - Crime & Violence

The Border: Obama Administration Could Deploy Up to 1,500 National Guard Troo...

The Obama administration is developing plans to deploy up to 1,500 National Guard troops along the southwestern border in an effort to step up the US military's anti-drug efforts there, the Associated Press reported, citing administration sources. Some 575 National Guard troops are already deployed there to support border law enforcement in a program that has been ongoing for years.

Esequiel Hernandez was killed by US Marines near the Texas border, while herding sheep. Are there more such victims to come? The plan is being worked out between the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. It comes despite Pentagon concerns about militarizing the border and stretching its resources too thinly.

Administration officials said the program was a stopgap measure designed to last for only a year until civilian law enforcement could be beefed up. The administration has already announced plans to hire 1,500 additional border agents. The National Guard program would be federally funded and would draw on National Guard volunteers from the four states that border Mexico: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Guard duties would include surveillance, intelligence analysis, and aviation support, but would not include direct law enforcement duties.

"We have been working very closely to build a set of options that would have the Department of Defense in a very limited way, for a limited period of time, serve in direct support for CBP," said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul Stockton, referring to Customs and Border Protection.

The move comes just months after President Obama vowed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the US would help Mexico confront escalating prohibition-related violence, in which nearly 11,000 people have been killed since Calderon unleashed the Mexican military against the country's powerful drug trafficking organizations in December 2006. It also comes just three weeks after Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a new southwest border counternarcotics strategy that will devote more federal resources to fighting the Mexican drug trafficking groups.

Undersecretary of National Protection at Homeland Security Rand Beers told the AP the administration has proposed spending $250 million on the program, but that the precise cost will not be known until all the details are worked out.

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Gretchen Peters certainly has a sense of timing. She spent the last decade covering Afghanistan and Pakistan, first for the Associated Press and later for ABC News, and managed to bring "Seeds of Terror" to press just as the US and its NATO allies in Afghanistan begin lurching toward a new approach to drug policy there. Just this past weekend, the US announced it was giving up on trying to eradicate its way to victory over the poppy crop, and for the past few weeks, news accounts of US and NATO attacks on traffickers, opium stockpiles, and heroin labs have been coming at a steady, if not escalating, pace.

Afghan opium Peters' thesis -- that the immensely lucrative opium and heroin trade is funding the Taliban and Al Qaeda to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which they use to wage their insurgency against the West and allies in Afghanistan -- while portrayed as stunning and shocking, is nothing new to readers of the Chronicle, or anyone else who has been following events in Afghanistan since before the 2001 US invasion.

But where "Seeds of Terror" shines is in its unparalleled detail and depth of knowledge of the drug trade, the Taliban/Al Qaeda insurgency, the Pakistan connection, and the intricate and complicated linkages between the actors. With access to government and security officials from the US, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and through interviews with everyone from simple famers to fighters to opium traders and even some amazingly high-up people in the international heroin trade, Peters is able to navigate and share with readers the murky, ever shifting nature of the beast.

She is especially useful in unraveling the various groupings that are simplistically referred to as "the Taliban." There is no single Taliban, Peters explains; there are rival warlords (Hekmatyar, Haqqani, Mullah Omar) running their drug empires and fighting to drive out the Westerners, their jihadist convictions clouded more each year in a haze of opium smoke and illicit profits. And then there are what are in essence criminal drug trafficking organizations. They, too, will identify themselves as Taliban for pragmatic reasons -- the intimidation factor, mainly -- but have little interest in holy war, except as it provides the chaotic cover for their underground trade.

Actually, as Peters details, the story goes back a generation further, to the last great American intervention into this Fourth World country on the other side of the planet. Then, during the Reagan-era sponsorship of the Afghan mujahedeen fighting to drive out the Soviet Red Army, millions of Afghans fled into refugee camps in Pakistan, and would-be warlords and foreign jihadis (including a young Osama bin Laden), tussled for the billions of dollars coming from Washington and doled out by Pakistani intelligence, or, alternately, from funding sources in Saudi Arabia.

Those warlords turned Pakistan, particularly the refugee-ridden Northwest Frontier territories into a leading opium producer during the 1980s, to ensure sources of funding for their armies, and secondarily, to turn as many Russian soldiers into junkies as they could. The Pakistani drug trafficking networks, including some very highly placed army and other officials, set up then are still the main conduits for the opium and heroin leaving Afghanistan today. Man, talk about your blowback.

Peters has a keen grasp of local affairs, knows how to write, and has constructed a gripping and informative narrative. But, faced with a counterinsurgency effort that has floundered, in good part because of profits from the illicit drug trade keeping the Taliban well-supplied with shiny new weapons, she cannot resist the temptation to try her own hand at recommending more effective policies. Here, unfortunately, she is decidedly conventional and unquestioning of the prohibitionist paradigm.

For example, the proposal floated by The Senlis Council in 2005 to simply buy up the poppy crop and divert it into the legitimate medical market gets remarkably short shrift. Peters devotes a mere paragraph to the plan, dismissing it as not pragmatic -- a position not universally held by experts.

Similarly, her policy prescriptions, while including such progressive developmentalist planks as alternative livelihood programs, strengthening institutions, and opening new markets for new crops, also include a call to "arrest or kill" drug kingpins, heroin lab chemists, and even mid-level traffickers. She also advocates air strikes against smuggling convoys, "smarter" counterinsurgency, and beefed up law enforcement against the "bad guys."

Peters' thinking on drug policy may be decidedly inside the box, but her contribution to our understanding of the complex nexus between the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan, local insurgencies, and global jihadi ambitions is important and chilling. This is the best layperson's guide to that nexus out there.

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Thousands of US Marines poured into Afghanistan's southern Helmand province this week to take the battle against the Taliban to the foe's stronghold. But in a startling departure from decades of US anti-drug policy, eradicating Helmand's massive opium poppy crop will not be part of their larger mission.

US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke told members of the G-8 group of industrialized nations Saturday that attempting to quash the opium and heroin trade through eradication was counterproductive and bad policy. Instead, the US would concentrate on alternative development, security, and targeting drug labs and traffickers.

Afghan anti-drug artwork, Nejat Center, Kabul "Eradication is a waste of money," Holbrooke told the Associated Press during a break in the G-8 foreign ministers meeting on Afghanistan. "The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. It might destroy some acreage, but it didn't reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar. It just helped the Taliban, so we're going to phase out eradication," he said.

"The farmers are not our enemy; they're just growing a crop to make a living. It's the drug system," Holbrooke continued. "So the US policy was driving people into the hands of the Taliban."

The Taliban insurgents are estimated to earn tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the opium and heroin trade, which generates multiple streams of income for them. Taliban commanders tax poppy farmers in areas under their control, provide security for drug convoys, and sell opium and heroin through smuggling networks that reach around the globe.

As late as last year, US policymakers supported intensifying eradication efforts, with some even arguing for the aerial spraying of herbicides, as has been done with limited success, but severe political and environmental consequences in Colombia. That notion was opposed by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, as well as by the US's NATO partners, particularly Britain, which supports expanded manual eradication of the poppy fields.

On Sunday, Afghan counternarcotics minister General Khodaidad disputed Holbrooke's claims that eradication was a failure, telling the Canadian Press that Afghanistan had achieved "lots of success" with its anti-drug strategy, which relies heavily on manual eradication of poppy fields. Still, he said he was open to the new American strategy. "Whatever program or strategy would be to the benefit of Afghanistan, we welcome it," Khodaidad said. "We are happy with our policy... so I'm not seeing any pause or what do you call it, deficiency, in our strategy. Our strategy's perfect. Our strategy's good."

Britain and US are at odds over opium field eradication plans. According to the London newspaper The Independent, British officials said Sunday they would continue to fund manual eradication in areas under their control. Those officials downplayed any dispute, however, saying details remained to be worked out.

But eradication has met with extremely limited success. According to the UN Office on Crime and Drugs, eradication peaked in 2003, while the Taliban were in retreat, with more than 51,000 acres destroyed. By 2007, that figure had declined to 47,000 acres, and last year, it was a measly 13,500 acres. Similarly, a survey of villages that had participated in eradication last year found that nearly half of them were growing poppy again this year.

The shift in US policy drew praise from observers across the ideological spectrum. It also aroused speculation that it could be emulated elsewhere, particularly in Latin America.

"The new counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan which scales down eradication and emphasizes rural development and interdiction is exactly right," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a drugs, development, and security expert with the Brookings Institution. "Under the prevailing conditions in Afghanistan, eradication has been not only ineffective; it has been counterproductive because it strengthens the bond between the rural population dependent on the illicit economy and the Taliban. Backing away from counterproductive eradication is not only a right analysis, it is also a courageous break on the part of the Obama administration with decades of failed counternarcotics strategy worldwide that centers on premature and unsustainable eradication," she added.

"This is clearly a positive, pragmatic step," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "It seems that the Obama administration is so deeply invested in succeeding in Afghanistan that they're actually willing to pursue a pragmatic drug policy. This is an intelligent move," he added. "It is an implicit recognition that you are not going to eradicate opium production in this world so long as there is a market for it. Given that Afghanistan is the dominant opium producer right now, the pragmatic strategy is to figure out how to manage that production rather than to pursue a politically destructive and ineffective crop eradication strategy."

"This administration is finally showing some pragmatism," said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst for the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. "We are beginning to understand that our policies are affecting the policy outcomes we want. We didn't see this under the previous administration, so this is definitely very promising," she added.

But it doesn't necessarily mean there is light at the end of the tunnel, she was quick to add. "Sadly, this doesn't make me more optimistic about our prospects," she said. "This will win us more hearts and minds on the ground, but it also has to be linked to fewer targeted killings, fewer airstrikes that generate civilian casualties, or any good will is likely to be canceled out," she said.

Similarly, Felbab-Brown cautioned that the Obama administration must be prepared to defend the shift at home. "It is imperative that the administration lay down the political groundwork and inform Congress, the public, and the international community that it is unlikely that the new policy will result in a substantial reduction of cultivation or of the dependence on the illegal economy any time soon since rural development is a long-term process dependent on security," she said. "Setting the right expectations now is necessary so that accomplishments of the new strategy in two or three years are not interpreted as failures since the numbers of hectares cultivated with poppy has not dramatically decreased."

Nadelmann suggested that the new strategy is not likely to significantly impact the drug trade. "With the alternative measures they're proposing, such as the focus on traffickers, there's not much reason to think it will have any significant impact on Afghan opium and heroin exports, but it will enable the US, NATO, and the Afghan government to pursue a more discriminating and productive strategy, at least at the political level," he said.

"The really potentially interesting implication of this is for Latin America," said Nadelmann. "It makes one wonder if the Obama administration might come to realize that the same strategy they are pursuing for opium in Afghanistan makes sense in Latin America for coca cultivation in the Andes."

That may be premature. With analysts predicting no decrease in the poppy crop and little impact on the drug trade, in the medium term, the only political selling point for the move away from eradication will be success in defeating or significantly weakening the Taliban insurgency. That will be a difficult task, one whose success is by no means guaranteed.

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As the world marks the end of the first century of drug prohibition -- the first international anti-drug convention was signed in Shanghai in 1909 -- the global anti-drug bureaucracy finds itself on the defensive. Faced with a rising chorus of critics, the bureaucracy fought back this week as the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs (UNODC) issued its World Drugs Report 2009. That the UNODC finally feels compelled to confront -- instead of ignore -- its critics is a sign of progress.

HCLU demonstration at March '09 UN drug summit, Vienna In addition to its usual quantifying of marginal changes in drug production and consumption levels and exhortations to try harder to fight the drug menace, this year's report was remarkable for its preface, penned by UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa, and, in a reversal of tone if not policy, some approving mention of Portugal's eight-year-old experiment with decriminalization.

On decriminalization in Portugal the report noted that:

Portugal is an example of a country that recently decided not to put drug users in jail. According to the International Narcotics Control Board, Portugal's "decriminalization" of drug usage in 2001 falls within the Convention parameters: drug possession is still prohibited, but the sanctions fall under the administrative law, not the criminal law. Those in possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use are issued with a summons rather than arrested. The drugs are confiscated and the suspect must appear before a commission. The suspect's drug consumption patterns are reviewed, and users may be fined, diverted to treatment, or subjected to probation. Cases of drug trafficking continue to be prosecuted, and the number of drug trafficking offenses detected in Portugal is close to the European average.

These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users. Among those who would not welcome a summons from a police officer are tourists, and, as a result, Portugal?s policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism. It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased.

The report then goes on to say that "while incarceration will continue to be the main response to detected traffickers, it should only be applied in exceptional cases to users." Combined with Costa's "people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution," in the preface, it suggests that the UNODC would not oppose decriminalization, but the report doesn't say that. Instead, it advocates for drug courts and drug treatment.

When it comes to legalization, in the preface, Costa acknowledged his anti-prohibitionist critics and attempted to confront their arguments. His comments are worth quoting at length:

"...Of late, there has been a limited but growing chorus among politicians, the press, and even in public opinion saying: drug control is not working. The broadcasting volume is still rising and the message spreading. Much of this public debate is characterized by sweeping generalizations and simplistic solutions. Yet, the very heart of the discussion underlines the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the current approach. Having studied the issue on the basis of our data, UNODC has concluded that, while changes are needed, they should be in favor of different means to protect society against drugs, rather than by pursuing the different goal of abandoning such protection.
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Several arguments have been put forward in favor of repealing drug controls, based on (i) economic, (ii) health, and (iii) security grounds, and a combination thereof.

The economic argument for drug legalization says: legalize drugs, and generate tax income. This argument is gaining favor, as national administrations seek new sources of revenue during the current economic crisis. This legalize and tax argument is unethical and uneconomical. It proposes a perverse tax, generation upon generation, on marginalized cohorts (lost to addiction) to stimulate economic recovery. Are the partisans of this cause also in favor of legalizing and taxing other seemingly intractable crimes like human trafficking? Modern day slaves (and there are millions of them) would surely generate good tax revenue to rescue failed banks. The economic argument is also based on poor fiscal logic: any reduction in the cost of drug control (due to lower law enforcement expenditure) will be offset by much higher expenditure on public health (due to the surge of drug consumption). The moral of the story: don't make wicked transactions legal just because they are hard to control.

Others have argued that, following legalization, a health threat (in the form of a drug epidemic) could be avoided by state regulation of the drug market. Again, this is naive and myopic. First, the tighter the controls (on anything), the bigger and the faster a parallel (criminal) market will emerge -- thus invalidating the concept. Second, only a few (rich) countries could afford such elaborate controls. What about the rest (the majority) of humanity? Why unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world for the sake of libertarian arguments made by a pro-drug lobby that has the luxury of access to drug treatment? Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled -- they are controlled because they are harmful; and they do harm whether the addict is rich and beautiful, or poor and marginalized.

The most serious issue concerns organized crime. All market activity controlled by the authority generates parallel, illegal transactions, as stated above. Inevitably, drug controls have generated a criminal market of macro-economic dimensions that uses violence and corruption to mediate between demand and supply. Legalize drugs, and organized crime will lose its most profitable line of activity, critics therefore say. Not so fast. UNODC is well aware of the threats posed by international drug mafias. Our estimates of the value of the drug market (in 2005) were groundbreaking. The Office was also first to ring the alarm bell on the threat of drug trafficking to countries in West and East Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and the Balkans. In doing so we have highlighted the security menace posed by organized crime, a matter now periodically addressed by the UN Security Council. Having started this drugs/crime debate, and having pondered it extensively, we have concluded that these drug-related, organized crime arguments are valid. They must be addressed. I urge governments to recalibrate the policy mix, without delay, in the direction of more controls on crime, without fewer controls on drugs. In other words, while the crime argument is right, the conclusions reached by its proponents are flawed. Why? Because we are not counting beans here: we are counting lives. Economic policy is the art of counting beans (money) and handling trade-offs: inflation vs. employment, consumption vs. savings, internal vs. external balances. Lives are different. If we start trading them off, we end up violating somebody's human rights. There cannot be exchanges, no quid-pro-quos, when health and security are at stake: modern society must, and can, protect both these assets with unmitigated determination. I appeal to the heroic partisans of the human rights cause worldwide, to help UNODC promote the right to health of drug addicts: they must be assisted and reintegrated into society. Addiction is a health condition and those affected by it should not be imprisoned, shot-at or, as suggested by the proponent of this argument, traded off in order to reduce the security threat posed by international mafias. Of course, the latter must be addressed, and below is our advice.

First, law enforcement should shift its focus from drug users to drug traffickers. Drug addiction is a health condition: people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution. Attention must be devoted to heavy drug users. They consume the most drugs, cause the greatest harm to themselves and society -- and generate the most income to drug mafias. Drug courts and medical assistance are more likely to build healthier and safer societies than incarceration. I appeal to Member States to pursue the goal of universal access to drug treatment as a commitment to save lives and reduce drug demand: the fall of supply, and associated crime revenues, will follow. Let's progress towards this goal in the years ahead,and then assess its beneficial impact on the next occasion Member States will meet to review the effectiveness of drug policy (2015).

Second, we must put an end to the tragedy of cities out of control. Drug deals, like other crimes, take place mostly in urban settings controlled by criminal groups. This problem will worsen in the mega-cities of the future, if governance does not keep pace with urbanization. Yet, arresting individuals and seizing drugs for their personal use is like pulling weeds -- it needs to be done again the next day. The problem can only be solved by addressing the problem of slums and dereliction in our cities, through renewal of infrastructures and investment in people -- especially by assisting the youth, who are vulnerable to drugs and crime, with education, jobs and sport. Ghettos do not create junkies and the jobless: it is often the other way around. And in the process mafias thrive.

Third, and this is the most important point, governments must make use, individually and collectively, of the international agreements against uncivil society. This means to ratify and apply the UN Conventions against Organized Crime (TOC) and against Corruption (CAC), and related protocols against the trafficking of people, arms and migrants. There is much more our countries can do to face the brutal force of organized crime: the context within which mafias operate must also be addressed...

To conclude, transnational organized crime will never be stopped by drug legalization. Mafias coffers are equally nourished by the trafficking of arms, people and their organs, by counterfeiting and smuggling, racketeering and loan-sharking, kidnapping and piracy, and by violence against the environment (illegal logging, dumping of toxic waste, etc). The drug/crime trade-off argument, debated above, is no other than the pursuit of the old drug legalization agenda, persistently advocated by the pro-drug-lobby (Note that the partisans of this argument would not extend it to guns whose control -- they say -- should actually be enforced and extended: namely, no to guns, yes to drugs).

So far the drug legalization agenda has been opposed fiercely, and successfully, by the majority of our society. Yet, anti-crime policy must change. It is no longer sufficient to say: no to drugs. We have to state an equally vehement: no to crime. There is no alternative to improving both security and health. The termination of drug control would be an epic mistake. Equally catastrophic is the current disregard of the security threat posed by organized crime."

While Costa's preface can only be read as an attack on the anti-prohibitionist position (while essentially calling for decriminalization of drug use), it also marks an engagement with the anti-prohibitionists. And they are ready to engage right back at him.

"The UN drug czar is talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he admits global drug prohibition is destabilizing governments, increasing violence, and destroying lives," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "But on the other hand he offers facile arguments dismissing the need for serious debate on alternative drug policies. The report erroneously assumes that prohibition represents the ultimate form of control when in fact it represents the abdication of control," Nadelmann added.

"The world's 'drug czar,' Antonio Maria Costa, would have you believe that the legalization movement is calling for the abolition of drug control," said Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a retired undercover narcotics detective. "Quite the contrary, we are demanding that governments replace the failed policy of prohibition with a system that actually regulates and controls drugs, including their purity and prices, as well as who produces them and who they can be sold to. You can't have effective control under prohibition, as we should have learned from our failed experiment with alcohol in the US between 1920 and 1933."

LEAP wants to keep the conversation going, and it wants citizens around the world to let the UNODC head know what they think. "We're asking people to go to http://www.DrugWarDebate.com, where they can send a message to the world 'drug czar' to educate him about the effects of policies he is supposed to be leading on," said Cole. "Now is the time for action. It's clear that prohibitionists are concerned about reformers' rapidly growing political clout when they attack us on page one of their annual report but didn't even mention us in last year's."

After ignoring anti-prohibitionist critics for years -- the legalization movement wasn't even mentioned in last year's report -- the global anti-drug bureaucracy has come out swinging. Costa has made his best case for smarter, better drug prohibition, and his arguments deserve to be addressed seriously.

But as successful nonviolent social movement leader Mohandas Gandhi famously observed: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." It appears that the anti-prohibitionist struggle is now in its penultimate stage.

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The idea that our drug policy should prioritize public health over law enforcement is such common sense that even the drug czar is comfortable saying it. Yet Warren County, OH prosecutor Rachel Hutzel has bravely attempted to refute this emerging conventional wisdom in a perfectly incoherent editorial entitled Many drug offenders need punishment, not just treatment:
Many thefts are committed to get drug money. The majority of traffic-related deaths are drug or alcohol-related. And personal crimes such as child endangering and domestic violence are usually fueled by drugs or alcohol.
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Many drug crimes should continue to be dealt with harshly. The people who are harmed by the selfish, destructive acts of drug users and drug dealers deserve nothing less.

Wait, I didn't hear anyone say anything about not punishing thieves, drunk drivers, and child endangerers. I'm pretty sure everyone's in agreement about that. If someone steals, can't you prosecute them for stealing? Am I missing something?

The abundance of crimes with actual victims is all the more reason to stop wasting criminal justice resources on people whose only crime was taking a drug that isn't allowed.

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As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it's not just the temperature that is heating up. Nearly 20,000 additional US troops are joining American and NATO forces on the ground, bringing foreign troop totals to nearly 90,000, and an insurgency grown wealthy off the opium and heroin trade is engaging them with dozens of attacks a day across the country. But this year, something different is going on: For the first time, the West is taking direct aim at the drug trafficking networks that deliver hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the insurgents.

the opium trader's wares (photo by Chronicle editor Phil Smith during September 2005 visit to Afghanistan) Last week, hundreds of British and Afghan troops backed by US and Canadian helicopters and US jets engaged in a series of raids in southern Helmand province, the country's largest opium producing and heroin refining region, seizing 5,500 kilograms of opium paste, 220 kilos of morphine, more than 100 kilos of heroin, and 148 kilos of hashish. They also uncovered and destroyed heroin labs and weapons caches, fending off Taliban machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks as they did so.

"This has been an important operation against the illegal narcotics industry and represents a significant setback for the insurgency in Helmand Province," said Lt. Col. Stephen Cartwright, commanding officer of some of the British troops. "The link between the insurgents and the narcotics industry is proven as militants use the money derived from the drug trade as a principle source of funding to arm themselves with weapons and conduct their campaign of intimidation and violence. By destroying this opium and the drug making facilities we are directly target their fighting capability. The operation has been well received by the Afghan people."

It wasn't the first Western attack on the Afghan drug trade this year, and it certainly won't be the last. Operating since last fall on new marching orders, Western troops and their Afghan allies are for the first time engaging in serious drug war as part of their seemingly endless counterinsurgency. And they are drawing a sharp response from the Taliban, which must be seen not so much as a monolithic Islamic fundamentalist movement, but as an ever-shifting amalgam of jihadis, home-grown and foreign, competing warlords, including the titular head of the movement, Mullah Omar, disenchanted tribesmen, and purely criminal drug trafficking organizations collectively called "the Taliban."

So far this year, 142 NATO and US troops have been killed in the fighting, putting 2009 on a pace to be the bloodiest year yet for the West in the now nearly eight-year-old invasion, occupation, and counterinsurgency aimed at uprooting the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies. Also dead are hundreds, if not more, Taliban fighters, and an unknown number of Afghan civilians, victims of Western air strikes, twitchy trigger fingers, and unending Taliban attacks on security forces and public places.

There will be "tough fighting" this summer and beyond in Afghanistan, top US commander Gen. David Petraeus said Wednesday in remarks to reporters in Tampa. As US and NATO troops go on the offensive "to take back from the Taliban areas that they have been able to control, there will be tough fighting," he said. "Certainly that tough fighting will not be concluded just this year. Certainly there will be tough periods beyond this year," he added, noting that the Taliban insurgency is at its bloodiest levels since 2001.

That rising insurgency, financed in large part by drug trade profits, has sparked a rethinking of Western anti-drug strategy, as well as the deployment of nearly 20,000 additional troops, with some 7,000 of them headed for Helmand, which, if it were a country, would be the world's largest opium producer.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out the new thinking in testimony to the Senate last month. The West is losing the battle against opium production, he said, so instead of merely going after Taliban militants it is time to "go after" the powerful drug lords who control the trafficking and smuggling networks in Afghanistan.

"With respect to the narcotics -- the threat that is there -- it is very clearly funding the insurgency. We know that, and strategically, my view is that it has to be eliminated," Mullen said. "We have had almost no success in the last seven or eight years doing that, including this year's efforts, because we are unable to put viable livelihood in behind any kind of eradication."

While the new approach -- de-emphasized eradication of farmers' fields and targeting the drug trade, especially when linked to the insurgency -- is better than the approach of the Bush years, it is still rife with problems, obstacles, and uncertainties, said a trio of experts consulted by the Chronicle.

"We are seeing a clear shift away from eradication being the dominant focus and a clear emphasis on rural development as a way to proceed, and that is a major positive development," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a scholar of drugs and insurgency at the Brookings Institution. "Interdiction was always nominally part of the package, but there is now a new mandate. Since October, NATO countries can participate in the interdiction of Taliban-linked traffickers. Certainly, the US and the UK are planning to vastly engage in this mission."

"The whole policy has changed," agreed Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the Afghanistan Studies Center at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. "There was lots of criticism about the troops not going after the drug leaders and the trafficking. They were concentrating on the terrorists, but now they realize the opium traffic has actually been used to finance their activities, so now they are trying to eliminate the traffickers and promoters of the trade," he explained.

"There is more emphasis on reconstruction," said Yaseer. "There will be some compensation for people who are giving up the poppy, and shifting from poppy to saffron, things like that. Still, security is key, and there are some problems with security," he added in a masterful use of understatement.

"The administration appears at least to understand that eradication should target cartels rather than poor local farmers," said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst with the libertarian leaning Cato Institute. "I hope they continue down that path; it's the best of many horrible options. The best policy would be legalization," she said, adding wistfully that she would prefer a more sensible drug policy.

"I have a feeling this is going to be a very bloody summer," said Malou. "There will be more violence because of the Afghan elections this August, as well as the Taliban's annual spring and summer offensive, which this year is going to be a sort of counteroffensive to the Western surge."

What the new emphasis on going after traffickers will accomplish remains to be seen, said Felbab-Brown. "Interdiction could provide a good reason for the Taliban to insert itself more deeply into the drug trade, or it could encourage traffickers to join the Karzai government," she said.

The effect of the new campaign on security in the countryside also remains to be seen, Felbab-Brown said. "Our reconstruction capacity is so weak after decades of neglect and a systematic effort to destroy those projects," she noted. "At bottom, though, the effectiveness of rural development programs depends on security. Without security, there is no effective program."

Western military forces also have some image-building to do, said Yaseer. "Because of wrong policies of the past and high civilian casualties, the original favorable perception of the foreign troops has changed from favorable to antagonistic. It will take some time to get back the good image."

Yaseer also had doubts about the utility of the massive foreign, mainly US, troop increase now underway. "Unless the sources of the problem, which lie in Pakistan, are attacked, adding more troops will not be very useful," he said. "They will just make the region more volatile and create more resentment, and they will provide the insurgents with a larger target than before," he said.

"The new administration's desire to change the policy makes one a bit optimistic, but again, time will tell whether the West is serious about them," Yaseer continued. Progress will depend on the nature of the operations and whether the new policies are actually implemented, whether this is real."

For Malou, the clock is ticking, and Western soldiers have no good reason to be remaining in Afghanistan for much longer. "We haven't found bin Laden in eight years, and most of the high-level Al Qaeda we've captured have been the result of police detective work, not military force. The foreign military presence in Afghanistan is perceived as a foreign occupation by many people in the region on both sides of the border, and that's poisoning the well even further," she said.

The US needs to be planning an exit strategy, said Malou. "When you look strategically and economically, the US just doesn't have a vital interest impelling us to stay in the region indefinitely," she said. "We need a timeframe for withdrawal within the next several years. We need to narrow our objectives to training security forces. I don't see any reason why we need to stay in this region any longer."

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Talk about marijuana legalization is at a level never seen before this year, and nowhere is that more strongly the case than in California. For the first time, a legalization bill is before the state legislature. Legalization recently polled at 56% in California. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, perhaps entranced by visions of dollar signs as he presides over an exploding budget deficit and imploding state economy, has publicly pondered whether now is the time to talk about legalization. And with the state bordering on Mexico, the notion of undercutting Mexican drug trafficking profits through legalization resonates especially loudly in the Golden State.

Now, somebody wants to do something about it, and the revolution is starting in Oaksterdam, the medical marijuana business empire/social movement centered in downtown Oakland and anchored by Richard Lee's Bulldog Café, SR-71 dispensary, and Oaksterdam University. Lee and a team of activists, attorneys, political consultants, and signature-gathering pros are working on the final drafts of an initiative to tax and regulate marijuana in California that they hope to place on the November 2010 election ballot.

In its current form (which is still subject to revision), the initiative would:

marijuana plants (photo from US Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia) Each provision leaves room for argument over its wisdom and its complications. Leaving legal marijuana commerce and taxation to localities instead of the state, for instance, could weaken the argument for state tax revenue benefits, but make the measure more palatable to counties either cash-strapped and eager for revenues or conservative and not desirous of allowing "pot clubs" to sprout in their domains.

Others require a bit of explanation. The provision for allowing possession of only an ounce runs contrary to treating it like alcohol -- there are no limits on wine cellars or beer collections -- and appears at first glance to at least potentially conflict with the personal grow provision. But the one ounce would be the state minimum; even in counties or cities that choose not to allow marijuana commerce, pot smokers could still have their stash.

The larger questions around a 2010 legalization initiative in California are whether the time is right and what would be the consequences of failure. Movement opinion appears to be split.

"We see a lot of things making it right for this time," said Lee. "The budget crisis here in California, the violence in Mexico, the economy continuing to decline, the polls -- all suggest that this may be the time to do it. The bigger picture is it's important to keep the issue alive, and we hope to have a vigorous campaign over the next year and a half to move this forward."

"This initiative is inevitable," said long-time Southern California activist Cliff Schaffer, who has been insisting for several years now that legalization in California is unstoppable. "I understand the money is already in place to gather signatures. They plan to do this whether anybody else likes it or not."

The time is ripe now, said Schaffer. "We've already got the tax issue -- the billion dollars in tax revenue even got Arnold's attention, and I think that 56% approval number is going to increase naturally. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it in the 60s by this time next year," he predicted.

But the national marijuana reform organizations are not so excited, and even a little bit nervous. National NORML didn't even want to talk about it, deferring instead to the state chapter. And the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), while diplomatic, was decidedly lukewarm.

"Everybody supports the idea of what Richard is trying to do and wants to see marijuana regulated and taxed in California as soon as possible, but there is also an ongoing debate and uncertainty as to when and how is best to proceed," said Bruce Mirken, MPP's San Francisco-based communications director. "Our take is that the polling we've seen so far suggests it is not likely to pass in 2010. Everyone wants to take advantage of public opinion moving in our direction, but it's not clear that it has moved enough. There is honest debate about when to pull the trigger. In our opinion, we should wait and build our forces and aim at 2012."

"I think it's premature," said Dale Gieringer, executive director of California NORML. "If you look at the poll numbers carefully, it's clear it wouldn't pass. We saw 56% in the Field Poll, but other polls show smaller margins, and once an initiative has any particulars to attack, you start seeing support melting away percentage point by percentage point."

Urging patience, Gieringer harkened back to the days of Proposition 215. "Before we did Prop. 215, there had been three medical marijuana bills in the state legislature, the Vasconcelos medical marijuana bill had passed and been vetoed, and that was basically what we took to the voters," he said. "We knew that an initiative to allow the personal use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes would pass because we had already gotten it through the legislature."

Marijuana legalization, on the other hand, doesn't have that extensive legislative pedigree or the years of discussion in Sacramento about its ins-and-outs that allows points of contention to be fleshed out. California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) has introduced a legalization bill this year, but this is the first time, and it hasn't even had a hearing yet.

"The Ammiano bill is very far-reaching, but it hasn't been discussed," said Gieringer. "We need to take this to the legislature, see where the weak points are. Those kinds of discussions will lead to changes and revisions and give us an idea where we can get the public to support this."

And then there's the cost. "Initiative campaigns are mind-bogglingly expensive here, and we may not get a lot of chances to raise the money to do it right," Mirken pointed out. "Smaller states like Nevada, we could do for around $2 million, but that doesn't even cover a decent local campaign here in California."

The challenges are considerable, Lee conceded, but that isn't stopping him. "We need to collect 460,000 valid signatures, and that means we need to collect 650,000 signatures. We think it will cost about $1.50 a signature, so you're looking at about a million dollars just to get it on the ballot."

Lee said backers hoped to have a final draft early next month. From there, the initiative goes to the attorney general's office for a title and summary, and should be ready for signature-gathering by the end of August. From then, organizers will have 150 days to collect the required signatures.

"We're a draft or two away," said Lee. "We're making some changes in the current draft and then we will test it again with our focus groups. We're getting pretty close now."

Once the initiative makes it to the ballot, said Lee, financial backing should appear. "I think people will start coming out of the woodwork to get on board," he said.

There are also arguments that could appeal to so far untapped, even unfriendly constituencies, said Schaffer. "It's not just taxes. We're also talking about the revenue from growing this stuff. The tax revenues are chump change compared to that. We'll see an additional $20 billion in revenue from the Central Valley, and people here have to pay income taxes at an 11% rate; that's another $2 billion right there. We have to make that an issue," he said.

Schaffer already has been playing that card in the conservative, but economically depressed and increasingly desperate Central Valley, the state's leading agricultural region, and one of the most important in the world. His brash views have garnered interest from farmers and press attention in an area of the state not considered friendly towards marijuana.

"That's a huge cash crop -- do we want those billions to go to Mexico or to Central Valley farmers?" is the question Schaffer is posing. "This is going to be a very important argument in the Central Valley, and we're going to have trouble unless we can pick up votes there, too. If we turn this into an economic opportunity, then we're not arguing about whether marijuana is good or bad, but does Fresno want $20 billion."

While putting dollars signs in the eyes of farm country will build support there, said Schaffer, the best argument for legalization proponents will be the "like alcohol" argument. "Everyone understands that," he said. "The closer we can come to just saying tax and regulate it like alcohol, the better off we are with the general public."

It's the consequences of losing a legalization initiative in California that concern MPP's Mirken and CANORML's Gieringer. "California has a reputation as a liberal, progressive state," said Mirken. "If it loses badly here, that could be perceived as serious setback at the national level."

"If we lose in 2010, that will really take the wind out of our sails," said Gieringer. "The legislature won't have to take us seriously, and there won't be anything on the 2012 ballot because funders will get discouraged and pull out. When an initiative loses in California, the cause dies. We're on a really great track toward legalization now, but we need to develop this further, and that's going to take a few years."

And so begins the debate within the California marijuana legalization debate. Would California voters jump on board for legalization next year, with momentum growing like Iranian demonstrations, or will opponents find enough niggling loose ends and unanswered questions to derail it? Is now the time for the final push, or will eagerness to make progress turn into a trap?

Right now, the ball is in the hands of Richard Lee and his Oaksterdam team.

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"God's Middle Finger" is not a book about drug policy. It's not really even a book about drugs; it belongs to the travel literature genre. But if you're interested in drugs, drug production, and drug policy, especially when it comes to the Mexican drug trade, this is a book you'll want to read.

And when you get done, you'll thank me, because this book is a real treat. Written by footloose British journalist Richard Grant, who came to this hemisphere in search of strangeness (his earlier book, "American Nomads," focused on drop-outs, hobos, and other oddities north of the border), "God's Middle Finger" is the sprawling, appalling, and sometimes frightening tale of his abortive quest to travel the length of Mexico's Sierra Madre mountain chain, a historically lawless and violent place where the presence of the Mexican state is only barely and rarely felt.

If you stand on the US-Mexican border at someplace like Douglas, Arizona, or Columbus, New Mexico, you can see the northern end of the Sierra Madre just a few miles to the south. From there, the massive, rugged range -- with peaks up to 11,000 feet -- extends nearly 900 miles to the south, cutting through the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Nayarit, Sinaloa, and Durango in a series of massifs carved by spectacular and not easily traversable canyons. Historically the home of outlaws, hermits, cowboys, and renegade Indians (surviving bands of Apache were hiding out there as late as the 1930s, Grant reports), the contemporary Sierra Madre is now the haunt of outcasts, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, Mormons, opium growers, pot farmers, vicious narcos, and -- every once in awhile -- marauding Mexican soldiers and police.

These days, the treasure of the Sierra Madre isn't gold, but the drug crops that grow there, and nobody needs any stinking badges. Or, even if they're wearing badges, it doesn't seem to make much difference. In one tale, Grant relates an evening in a bar in a mountain town where two lip-twitching, beer-swilling local cops insist he buy them caguamas (40 ouncers) of beer and share their cocaine, or perico (parakeet, because it makes you chatter like one). "Call me paranoid," Grant wrote, "but the idea of doing cocaine with Mexican cops makes me nervous." But given the alternative -- pissing off a pair of coked-out, half-drunk cops who would be mightily insulted in he turned down their offer -- Grant joined them in snorting lines off the table until, luckily for him, his money ran out and he could make his escape.

(I had a similar experience with a coke-shooting cop in a small town in Veracruz back in the mid-1990s. It was at that point that I began to understand that some of the cocaine diverted from the Caribbean smuggling route after a Reaganite crackdown in the mid-1980s and now flowing north through Mexico was "falling off the back of the truck." You didn't used to see a whole lot of cocaine in Mexico, and you certainly didn't run into coked-out cops. My, how things have changed!)

Grant writes that he was warned repeatedly not to travel the Sierra Madre, that he was likely to be killed if he traveled by himself. But, obsessed by those mountains, he went anyway, usually relying on local contacts to keep him safe. It didn't always work. The prologue to "God's Middle Finger" has him fleeing for his life on foot through the mountains at night, chased by drunken, coked-out narcos apparently ready to kill him for the sport of it. On another occasion, Grant tells about how he ruined his vehicle's motor after being forced at gunpoint to tow the broken-down car of some strangers up a mountain pass.

Grant has a great flair for story-telling and introduces the reader to a whole ensemble of vivid characters and local histories, but his love for the Sierra Madre curdles a bit when faced with the violent, rapacious realities of the lawless life. Private gun ownership is forbidden in Mexico, but as one of his informants tells him, every home has at least a shot gun and a pistol, and AK-47s are a badge of macho honor. Murder is common in the region, so is rape, and so is revenge killing. Mix in a hyper-violent population of narcos hopped up on blow and booze, and the stark beauty of the Sierra Madre gets pretty damned ugly and scary.

As Grant puts it: "What you had, in other words, was a hillbilly vendetta culture that was up to its eyeballs in the world's most dangerous business: illegal narcotics. Its existing tendencies toward violence, vengeance, and ruthlessness had become supercharged."

So supercharged that Grant, sick of the fear and tension and the macho posturing, cut short his trip about half-way down the cordillera. Prudence and revulsion may have won out over obsession, but with "God's Middle Finger," Grant provides a highly memorable set of glimpses into the mountain heartlands of some of Mexico's meanest narcos.

"God's Middle Finger" is fast-paced, full of intriguing detail and strange doings. Reading it is going to make you want to follow in Grant's footsteps... or run just as fast as you can in the other direction. In either case, you'll have had a fascinating education into a strange but not so distant world inextricably linked to our own through our appetites for some of the products it produces.

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The Obama administration last Friday unveiled its Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy to deal with the unremitting prohibition-related violence plaguing Mexico, and especially its border cities. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon enlisted the military in his offensive against the so-called cartels in December 2006, some 11,000 people have died in the violence, and the streets of Mexican border towns have at times resembled battlefields.

US Border Patrol In recognition of the continuing violence and heedful of Mexican criticism that the US is not doing enough on its end to undercut the cartels, the administration responded first with increased funding for border law enforcement in March and now with the new counternarcotics strategy. The new strategy will emphasize reducing demand in the US and targeting the flow of money and weapons south. It includes:

"This new plan, combined with the dedicated efforts of the government of Mexico, creates a unique opportunity to make real headway on the drug threat," said Gil Kerlikowske, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), at an Albuquerque press conference unveiling the new strategy.

"International cooperation is very, very key," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, taking time to praise Calderon for his efforts. "We have an unprecedented opportunity to work on drug trafficking on both sides of the border," she said. "We should not let this opportunity go by."

According to the Justice Department, Mexican and other South American drug trafficking organizations are laundering between $18 billion and $39 billion a year in drug profits in the US. Some of that money then goes to purchase weapons in the lightly-controlled US gun market. Traffickers use those weapons against each other, as well as Mexican police and soldiers, as evidenced dramatically last weekend in the Acapulco shootout that left 18 people dead, including two soldiers, and the killings of 13 people in Ciudad Juarez last Friday despite the presence of more than 5,000 soldiers patrolling the city.

Reducing demand in the US is a key part of the struggle, said Napolitano. "We can't just fight drugs at the border. We can't just fight drugs by fighting traffickers. We must fight drugs in the United States," Napolitano said.

"This strategy is tough, it's strong, and it's balanced," said Attorney General Eric Holder, adding that it will be "an effective way forward that will crack down on cartels and make our country safer."

cross-border smuggling tunnel Others weren't so sure that would be the case. "The new plan simply calls for rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," said Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project. "The plan ignores the central problem, which is that our policy of marijuana prohibition has handed the Mexican cartels a massive market that keeps them rolling in cash, not just in Mexico, but according to the Department of Justice, in 230 American cities."

"Rather than trying to make America's 15 million monthly marijuana consumers go away, we need to gain control of this market by regulating marijuana like we do beer, wine and liquor," Houston continued. "Any anti-drug effort that leaves the marijuana trade in the hands of the cartels is nothing but a full-employment plan for professional drug warriors and cartel bosses alike, not a serious proposal to address the problem," he said.

The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) was a bit more diplomatic. "The violence on the US and Mexico border is spiraling out of control because of the Mexican drug war. We are hopeful that Obama's new strategy will bring real change, and not more of the same policies that are failing our nation and communities," said Julie Roberts, acting director of Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico. "It is disappointing that our federal officials today remained focused on targeting the supply side of the Mexican drug war. Of course we need solutions that improve public safety and keep our country safe, but we also need to develop a public health plan for safely reducing drug demand in this country."

"The time has surely come to give serious consideration to taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol," added DPA executive director Ethan Nadelmann. "That wouldn't solve all of Mexico's and America's prohibition-related problems, but it would prove invaluable in breaking the taboo on open debate and honest policy analysis, without which there can be no long term solutions to today's challenges."

While the criticism from drug reformers was blunt, some Latin Americanists had a more nuanced response. "This is the Obama administration's response to Mexico's criticism about the US not doing enough on arms trafficking, money laundering, and drug consumption," said Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America. "The idea of enhanced cooperation among the different US agencies involved is an important step forward, and enhanced cooperation with Mexico is also important."

But while the administration is talking a good game, said Meyer, a look at the federal drug budget reveals a drug policy on cruise control. "The ONDCP drug control budget is a continuation of the same focus in US drug policy, with its objectives focusing a lot on interdiction and law enforcement, and not so much on arms trafficking. There is a slight increase in funding for treatment programs, but a reduction in funding for prevention. I don't see any shift in the balance," she said.

"When it comes to Mexico, what we need to see is a larger focus on some of the structural issues, such as reforming the police and the judicial system," Meyer said. "That is going to have more of a long-term impact than just providing more equipment for the police and the military."

For Larry Birns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, the new strategy appeared mostly symbolic. "I think the announcement of this strategy is way to put drug issues on the back burner for awhile while the administration deals with more pressing issues, like health care," he said. "The administration is trying to inoculate itself from criticism rather than undertaking an effort to effectively deal with drugs, which would involve the thornier border issues of immigration reform and the NAFTA traffic."

The border is a complicated place, affected not only by the drug trade but by licit trade, human migration, and weapons, among other issues. The drug trade in turn is driven by demand. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy is largely more of the same old drug war, the critics suggest. Perhaps all the other issues would be better dealt without that drug war.

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The Canadian House of Commons today passed the Conservative government of Prime Minister Steven Harper' C-15 crime bill, which will institute mandatory minimum sentencing for some marijuana and other drug offenses. The vote, in which after dilly-dallying for days, the opposition Liberals joined in, came despite hearings in which no witnesses favored such a tough on crime approach north of the border.

It's not a done deal yet. The bill must still be approved by the Canadian Senate, which issued a report several years ago calling for the government to head in the opposite directoin. But the Senate, which is appointed, is not known for bucking the government and the House of Commons.

That the Liberals buckled for fear of being "soft on crime" and supported the Conservatives in this giant step backward is disappointing but not surprising. Oh, Canada! Once we looked to you for a progressive example on drug policy.

I will be writing about all this for the Chronicle later this week, as well as focusing on our other border with a feature article on the Obama administration's new initiative to thwart the Mexican so-called drug cartels.

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