Good Discussion Of Marijuana On CNBC

(Via Radley Balko.)

It's great to see this issue being treated seriously in the mainstream media.

So, all of you prohibitionists, are the experts who advocate for legalization in this CNBC segment just a bunch of pot heads trying to justify their vice?

Obama Is A Paradigmatic Political Hack

The president clearly knows better than this:



All that the marijuana question's popularity says about the people who voted for it is that they actually know how to think clearly and independently about drug policy. This is in contrast to Obama who, though he has to be aware that the prohibition of marijuana is even sillier than the prohibition of alcohol, is still willing to parrot the conventional wisdom to maintain the support of the ignorant. And that's not change I can believe in.

So welcome to my long list of political hacks, Mr. President. You're just the latest addition to a long and ignoble list.

The Big Picture: Mexico's Drug War

This is the main result of the US and Mexican governments' war on drugs (click image to enlarge):



Go to the Big Picture section on the Boston Globe's site for the whole photo slide show.

Obama, Medical Marijuana, And Liberaltarianism

From Reason:

Today Attorney General Eric Holder gave the clearest indication so far that the Justice Department plans to respect state laws that permit the medical use of marijuana:

The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law....Given the limited resources that we have, our focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that's inconsistent with federal and state law.

As medical marijuana activists noted, that still leaves unresolved the issue of what will happen to pending cases against people who provide cannabis to patients in states such as California. Thomas O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, has gone back and forth on that question. Charlie Lynch, who ran a medical marijuana dispensary in San Luis Obispo, is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday and could spend decades in federal prison.

It's telling that there's been no significant backlash against Obama's move to respect states' rights with respect to medical marijuana. I think this is evidence of the workability of a liberaltarian alliance. When the interests of liberals and libertarians overlap, it can be difficult for conservatives to offer an effective response.

But what's happening in this case could just be a result of there not being any good argument to be offered against allowing states to decide their own medical marijuana policy.

Update:

Just when I thought it looked like no major politicians were silly enough to speak out against Obama's change in DEA policy, the Republican senator from my own state steps up to the plate--from the Associated Press (via Slog):

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says the Obama administration's change in policy toward medical marijuana is a bad idea.

...

Grassley says the new policy outlined by Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday is counterproductive because marijuana leads to use of harder drugs.

Oh, Chuck, just when you were wooing me back with your suggestion that AIG executives ought to consider seppuku, you have to go and say something completely ridiculous. Well, that's the GOP way, I guess.

Meeting Of The Matts, Liberal And Libertarian

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18272)

Topics covered:

Chas Freeman post-mortem: was China just a red herring?... Matt W. on which regime Freeman’s in bed with... Pork: the other right meat... Obama’s untransformative undermining of DC school vouchers... Matt Y. defends the Employee Free Choice Act... Should marijuana legalization be decided nationally or locally?...

Drug Prohibition's Role In Mexico's Violence

From the Cato Institute:



Check out Cato's YouTube channel for more videos like this one.

My Column On Friday Will Be About Salvia

Here's a picture of me preparing to smoke Salvia divinorum (click image to enlarge it):



Ingesting this uniquely potent (though, at least for now, legal) hallucinogenic herb was part of the research for my column this week. Read all about it in the print and online editions of the Daily Iowan on Friday and then check out all the bonus content I'll be posting here on the Podium that same day.

"100 Years Of Failure And Futility"

Reason reports:

The United Nations is currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of the “international war on drugs.” Yes, it was in 1909 that 13 countries joined together in the “International Opium Commission” to halt the Chinese opium trade. And how did that go? According to the Associated Press, although strongman Mao Zedong managed (or so his government claims) to make significant inroads in the 1950s, nowadays “Government statistics put the number of known addicts in China at 1.2 million, including 700,000 heroin users, more than two-thirds of them under the age of 35.”

Strangely, after a century's worth of attempts to forcefully stamp out two perfectly legitimate and useful human urges—to make a decent living, and to pleasurably alter our consciousness—drug warriors are no closer to victory. The chief of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, even confesses to feeling “somewhat frustrated” that his impossible job is so darn impossible.

Continue reading.

Glenn Beck Is (Still) A Fucking Idiot

(Via Reason.)

Legalize, regulate, tax. It really is just that simple.

Here's a great video debunking Beck's unfounded "marijuana tears up your lungs" claim. It was put out by the Marijuana Policy Project, which is the organization that Beck's gracious interlocutor started:



Check out more clips like this one at the Marijuana Policy Project's YouTube channel.

Support For Marijuana Legalization Is Growing

Polling analyst extraordinaire Nate Silver writes (via DoseNation):

We all know that Michael Phelps was on something. But perhaps he was also onto something. Three recent polls show that Americans are more sympathetic to the idea of legalizing marijuana than ever before.

The first poll, conducted last week by Rasmussen Reports, has 40 percent of Americans in support of legalizing the drug and 46 percent opposed. The second, conducted in January by CBS News, has 41 percent in favor of legalization and 52 percent against. And a third poll, conducted by Zogby on behalf of the marijuana-rights advocacy group NORML, has 44 percent of Americans in support of legalized pot and 52 percent opposed.



Continue reading.

Update:

Matthew Yglesias offers some entertaining comparisons:

Inspired by this Chris Bowers post, here’s a chart I made comparing public support for legalizing marijuana to the approval ratings for Rush Limbaugh and various Republican Party leaders that I found on PollingReport:

CNN: Mexican Drug Violence Likened To "Civil War"

The most mainstream of mainstream media outlets reports:

A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.

...

Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, is undergoing a horrifying wave of violence that some are likening to a civil war. Drug traffickers battle fiercely with each other and Mexican authorities. The homicide rate reached a record level in 2008 and indications are that the carnage could be exceeded this year.

It's great to see CNN using such strong (and honest!) language. Of course, I've been harping on this issue for some time, writing posts such as "Rampant Drug Violence As A Good Sign? Seriously?" and "Mexico: The Canary In The Coal Mine?". But, regardless of how many times I've already said it, I still feel compelled to say it again: To end the violence, end the drug war. Legalize. Regulate. Tax. Now, now, now.

I don't care what the conventional wisdom is. If we don't change the status quo, the situation in Mexico may soon get far worse. And we really don't want a failed state sharing a nearly 2,000-mile border with us. It's difficult to overstate how bad that would be.

The Final Word On The Phelps Fiasco

...(at least on this blog) goes to Radley Balko, who's provided wonderfully, bitingly sarcastic commentary throughout the news cycle this event dominated:

Michael Phelps Apologizes ... to China

His message to Chinese youngsters: “Do the right thing.”

Which I guess means submit to the state’s authority, even when the law you’ve broken is an immoral one, and the means the state has used to enforce it are wholly disproportionate to the alleged crime.

So let’s stop with the rabble rousing. No more questioning the legitimacy of bad laws. No more questioning the state’s power, or it’s willingness to flex its authority when it gets embarrassed by its citizenry. No more staring down tanks, whether they belong to Deng Xiaoping ... or Sheriff Leon Lott.

And, in case you don't feel sufficiently motivated to click Balko's links, here's the picture of Deng's tanks:



And here's Lott's:



That's right, the good Sheriff Lott actually procured an armored personnel carrier for his department--and that was even before his jurisdiction was overrun with such nefarious characters as pot-smoking swimmers. Balko actually wrote about this madness months ago:

The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff's Department (that's them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle "The Peacemaker," and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it's generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will "save lives."

...

Like most of these military toys obtained by local police departments, the Peacemaker will inevitably be used on drug and gambling raids—that is, to enforce laws against consensual activities. Or, as we're now seeing in Minnesota, perhaps on raids against leftist political activists.

Oh, authoritarianism. The human propensity to violently dominate others would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. And terrifying. Because when it comes down to it, we are just an overgrown tribe of super-empowered chimps.

Rampant Drug Violence As A Good Sign? Seriously?

Andrew Sullivan points to an absurd paragraph from the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. law-enforcement officials—as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico—say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing “If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

The Cato Institute offers a sane response to the government's tired propaganda:

While U.S. leaders have focused on actual or illusory security threats in distant regions, there is a troubling security problem brewing much closer to home. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and shows signs of becoming even worse. That violence involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market. To an increasing extent, the violence also entails fighting between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces.

The carnage has already reached the point that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans traveling in Mexico. U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico’s border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even more troubling, the violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.

Continue reading.

And John Robb goes even further with his quite literal warnings about the barbarians gathering at our gates.

The best way to protect America's national security is to legalize, regulate, and tax most currently illegal drugs. Doing so is the most feasible strategy for bankrupting the dangerous global guerrillas who are becoming ever more aggressive in asserting themselves in Mexico and the United States. And if we don't undercut their power base, they will undercut ours.

Mind-altering Substances Aren't Just For Humans

Cracked.com reports (via Andrew Sullivan):

Almost everyone loves drugs. Whether it's a cigarette break after a high-powered business meeting, a cold beer after a hot day on the job or a half-ounce of heroin injected directly into the scrotum to ease the stress of writing Internet comedy, people love their intoxicants.

But that's not a human invention. Experts have found that animals also seek out a quick chemical high from plants, bugs and, well, wherever they can find it. Here are seven animals that love the magic of intoxication even more than we do.

Continue reading.

Scandal! I demand that General Mills drop their degenerate anthropomorphic bee mascot immediately. And how can the GOP possibly continue to associate itself with a species of lushes like elephants? Worst of all, what will the children think when they learn that Santa Claus' universally respected reindeer love to trip balls? All these animals owe the American people apologies--they've really let us down with their inappropriate behavior.

What Michael Phelps Actually Should Have Said

"I have two things to say at the press conference I've called today. First, to the general public, whether I smoked marijuana at a party is none of your business. Second, to the governmental authorities, I assert my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and thus have nothing to say to any of you about the photograph in question. Have a nice day, everyone. I'll see you all in 2012."

Push Back Against Marijuana Prohibitionism Continues

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers writes:

I am a twenty-six year old law school graduate who is currently pursuing a masters in political science. I smoke up to three times a week, depending on my schedule. Am I an unproductive member of society? Should I be apprehended to face criminal charges because I enjoy sitting on my couch, lighting a joint, and watching The Wire? According to the puritanical laws governing marijuana, and the false rhetoric espoused by those cognitively inflexible enough to see marijuana as somehow worse than tobacco, I am a criminal. I believe the laws currently in place reflect the views of a society inordinately afraid of the truth.

But what do I know? I smoke weed.

And here's Sullivan himself on the ongoing absurd theater surrounding Phelps' marijuana use:

America's drug war insanity deepens. What I love about the harrumphing is its total incoherence. The argument, so far as I can tell, is: a) marijuana destroys people, renders them incapable of productive and worthwhile lives; b) yes, the new president and the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time have smoked pot; c) but that means we have to punish them all the more!

Because they disprove the lies required to sustain the Prohibition. The more the myths of the anti-cannabis brigade are exposed, the more they have to be enforced. For my original pro-Phelps splutter, see here.

But perhaps the best response to this brouhaha thus far comes from Radley Balko who has authored a brilliant post titled "What Michael Phelps Should Have Said."

My take on what we can learn about the mainstream media from their reaction to the Phelps photograph can be found here.

Update:

Slog is appropriately blunt regarding the possible criminal charges against Phelps:

What a bunch of fucking jerks. I hope they totally embarrass themselves with a lack of evidence.

Update II:

At the UI Advocates for Liberty blog, Jeff Yager also comments on the prospect of Phelps facing prosecution for the bong rip heard round the world:

Wow. I really hope they charge him and let this complete insanity of marijuana prohibition be brought into the limelight. Nobody cared half this much when the guy got a DUI a few years ago. You know, something that actually might have put others in danger? But take a hit on a bong at a college party? CRUCIFY HIM!!!! Yeah, that's logical.

Update III:

Balko discusses the prosecutor's discretion in the Phelps case.

Mainstream Reporting On Drug War's Collateral Damage

The Washington Post reports on something Radley Balko has been writing about for quite some time:

It was past 7 p.m., but late sun still streamed through the large kitchen window as Georgia stood at the stove stirring her simmering tomato-artichoke sauce. Georgia turned, catching a glimpse of something out the window that sent a jolt of fear through her. Hooded, armed men, dressed in black, were fanning across the back yard. Still more men, crouching low, moved around the side of the house. Georgia's mind raced to make sense of the strange tableau. Was someone playing an elaborate practical joke?

One of the men spotted Georgia gaping out the window. He lifted his high-powered assault rifle and pointed it directly at her, she recalled. Georgia -- still clutching her wooden spoon -- threw both hands up in the air and screamed. "Cheye, I think it's SWAT!"

Cheye was sitting on the edge of his bed in his boxers. He was just about to put on his black dress socks, when he heard Georgia scream something that made absolutely no sense. He looked out a bedroom window to see armed, masked men running. He was still wondering if they were home invaders when he heard his front door shatter.

In the kitchen, Georgia spun to face the sound of the splintering door. Men in black burst through the front door and into the living room.

Read the whole thing.

Stop the madness. End the drug war. Now.

And just in case anyone thinks this is an isolated incident, I strongly recommend following Radley Balko's site, the Agitator, on which he exposes that the drug war, like all wars, is hell.

Update:

Another reason police need to be more careful about how they use SWAT teams--the Associated Press reports:

Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.

Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.

The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.

They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.

Continue reading.

Update II:

Yet more reasons that the drug war is a horrific disaster: John Robb continues to write about how it facilitates the funding of guerrilla groups that are chipping away at the nation-state system, DoseNation notes that these groups are increasingly infiltrating the United States, and Slog reports on unemployed people for whom getting involved in the illegal drug business is the best economic opportunity.

Legalize, regulate, tax. Three simple words. A very straightforward solution.

Phelps Scandal Exposes Government Shills

The Times reports:

Drug claim could spell disaster for Michael Phelps

The world was spellbound for a magical seven days at the Beijing Games as Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian in history, but today his career could lie in ruins after being pictured allegedly taking drugs.

America woke up to discover that their Olympic hero, whose face smiles from packets of cornflakes on millions of breakfast tables this morning, stands accused of smoking cannabis. Athletes caught using the drug, a banned substance under rules set out by the World Anti-Doping Agency, could face a ban of up to two years.

Who the hell cares?

If anything, smoking pot probably decreases his lung capacity and thus makes him a slower swimmer. So why is this relevant to his competitive sport of choice?

People (often rightly) take note of and (often wrongly) make make a big deal out of counter-cultural bias inherent in alternative media. But stories like this one show that the allegedly neutral mainstream media has a bizarre drive to toe the prohibitionist government line. And worse than that, these deranged anti-marijuana mainstream sources go as far as to present nonsensical moral objections to drug use in the abstract as fact--giving the impression that everyone thinks or ought to think that marijuana use is a bad thing. It's no wonder so many people believe this propaganda when so much of the mainstream media is so happy to shill for it.

This is why I'm optimistic about the death of so many mainstream news outlets. Nothing clears dead wood better than fire. And only when the mass of inanimate clutter is removed can anything new grow in its place.

Update:


Reason.tv at Slamdance: Drug War, Colombia-Style:



It's scandalous that the mainstream media care more about chiding famous athletes for smoking pot than reporting on the horrific violence that the drug war inflicts on innocent Colombians.

Update II:

Slog parses the wording of Phelps' apology:

"I engaged in behaviour which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment," Phelps said in a statement to the Associated Press. "I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. "For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

But what does "it" refer to? Smoking pot? Allowing himself to be photographed while smoking pot? Allowing himself to be photographed while smoking pot out of a skank-ass bong? Allowing himself to be forced by finances into making an apology for something he's going to keep doing on a regular basis? Well played, Mr. Phelps.

Marijuana Inc.

(Via DoseNation.)

Hey, speaking of a "green stimulus" and "green jobs," why not try legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana? If our society were more rational, there wouldn't even be a debate about this. It's really just common sense--but, tragically, as the saying goes, common sense isn't all that common.

Mexico: The Canary In The Coal Mine?

Continuing with the line of thinking from my earlier post "Re: Was Ayn Rand Right All Along?"...

The global economic/political/social situation looks increasingly bleak.

The Washington Post reports:

The world economy is deteriorating more quickly than leading economists predicted only weeks ago, with Britain yesterday becoming the latest nation to surprise analysts with the depth of its economic pain.

Britain posted its worst quarterly contraction since 1980 on the heels of sharper than expected slowdowns reported from Germany to China to South Korea. The grim data, analysts said, underscores how the burst of the biggest credit bubble in history is seeping into the real economies around the world, silencing construction cranes, bankrupting businesses and throwing millions of people out of work.

Continue reading.

And Joel Kurtzman writes for the Wall Street Journal (via Thomas Barnett):

Mexico is now in the midst of a vicious drug war. Police officers are being bribed and, especially near the United States border, gunned down. Kidnappings and extortion are common place. And, most alarming of all, a new Pentagon study concludes that Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state. Defense planners liken the situation to that of Pakistan, where wholesale collapse of civil government is possible.

One center of the violence is Tijuana, where last year more than 600 people were killed in drug violence. Many were shot with assault rifles in the streets and left there to die. Some were killed in dance clubs in front of witnesses too scared to talk.

Continue reading.

Barnett comments:

The danger that Latin America once again becomes an active arena for U.S. military involvement (we are always somewhat involved, I'm talking about where the public's sense of intervention is activated by events and magnitude) looms for two reasons: the global downturn eventually reaches there (despite the political bravado down there) and the drug violence is distinctly heating up.

Point being: the auto-pilot quality of the past decade isn't likely to work. Neither subject (pushing more economic inclusiveness with trade agreements and figuring out an alternative path to the dysfunctional (certainly for Mexico) drug war) are ones Obama would gladly tackle in the near-term, and yet, events may force him to do so.

John Robb brings up the highly problematic situation in Mexico in two recent posts that are both highly instructive and disturbing.

Regarding how Mexico's unraveling relates to the problems most other nation states are having, Robb writes:

Diving into military theory (again).

A core dynamic behind the emergence of the nation-state was it's ability to run a successful protection business (aka racket). A system that has been growing since the treaties of Westphalia in the 1600s. The protection business is relatively simple:

1. It is a monopoly. It has exclusive ownership over the use of violence. As a monopoly, it must crush all internal competitors.
2. It defends its monopoly from outside interests -- as in warfare with nation-state and non-state competitors.
3. It charges the customers (individuals and businesses) within its geographical areas of control for this service. This isn't optional. Customers presumably benefit from this protection.

...

The protection formula broke down in the latter half of the 20th Century as the nation-state became more complex. Key elements of this breakdown include...

Continue reading.

So what should you take away from all this?

First, in the short-term we need to end the drug war ASAP unless we're okay with the strong possibility of having to deal with a failed stated on our southern border within the next several years--to a certain extent we already are, but things could easily get much worse. Second, we need to brace ourselves for a long and wild ride. The world seems set to change radically over the coming decades. We all need to start thinking about what we can do to help ourselves through these difficult times as opposed to just standing around hoping our failing nation-states will save us. Because they won't.