Ok, if you're growing marijuana, don't harbor an illegal pet mountain lion:

	mountain lion

Russell Rexrode, a 41 year old Ft. Bragg resident, has been sentenced to 180 days in jail following his conviction by a jury of felony cultivation of marijuana. Sheriff's deputy Dustin Lorenzo testified during the trial that he weighed 119 pounds of processed marijuana and 142 pounds-worth of unprocessed marijuana plants found at Rexrode's residence. Sheriff's Lieutenant Rusty Noe testified that the wholesale value of the pot was $2,400 per pound.

Fish and Game Department Lieutenant Lynette Shimek testified that she led the search of Mr. Rexrode's property on Oct. 17, 2005, on the basis of evidence relating to "unlawful mountain lion possession." Superior Court judge Ron Brown presided over the case, and in addition to giving Rexrode the jail sentence, he ordered the defendant to pay $1,500 for the misdemeanor offense of having the mountain lion. [Ukiah Daily Journal]

Now, I understand why someone would grow marijuana. It's medicine. It makes people happy and creative. And I understand why someone would want a mountain lion. They are majestic. But this guy pushed his luck too far. As much as many of us may wish to live in a world where you can grow weed and raise mountain lions, we just don't. And if there's one thing that's going to generate more buzz around the neighborhood than a homegrown marijuana garden, it's a lion.

But here's what I want to know: how come the guy got 180 days in jail for growing pot, but only paid a $1,500 fine for the mountain lion?! It should go without saying that mountain lions are vastly more dangerous than marijuana.

In a shameless, yet brilliant, ploy to generate web traffic, comedy Central has compiled a list of their favorite drug-themed Stephen Colbert clips. It worked on me. Here's the link.

My personal favorite is when Stephen bids farewell to Marijuana Policy Project's Aaron Houston by saying "good luck destroying America." Aaron is the nicest guy you'll ever meet and the very notion that he's trying to destroy America is the perfect encapsulation of drug warrior paranoia.

The fact that Colbert has created a whole satirical routine surrounding the delusional mindset of the drug war cheerleaders is testament to the complete laughingstock that group has become.

Pete Guither has an excellent breakdown of why our policy towards the most dangerous drugs is just as flawed as our policy towards marijuana. It's a tricky subject that can be approached many ways, but he does a great job of hitting the most important points without writing a book. I think I agree with it in its entirety.

Pete's rant is enjoyable even if you already understand the argument, so go read it.

The latest outrage in Canada's heated harm reduction debate came at the hands of Health Minister Tony Clement who went off the rails by questioning the ethics of doctors who practice harm reduction:

MONTREAL — The association representing Canada's doctors rapped Health Minister Tony Clement on Monday after he questioned the ethics of physicians who support the use of supervised injection sites for drug addicts.
…

"Is it ethical for health-care professionals to support the administration of drugs that are of unknown substance, or purity or potency, drugs that cannot otherwise be legally prescribed?" Clement said.

He said that in any other medical setting, supervised overdoses would be considered "highly unprofessional." [Canadian Press]

Canada's doctors beg to differ:

The Canadian Medical Association's president responded to Clement by saying 79 per cent of members agree that safe-injection sites and harm-reduction programs work.

Dr. Brian Day said sites that allow addicts to inject their own narcotics under the supervision of medical staff have been successful in curbing illegal drug use and slowing the spread of disease.

"We specifically take issue with the minister using that phrase," Day told reporters after Clement's speech.

"The minister was off base in calling into question the ethics of physicians involved in harm reduction.

"It's clear that this was being used as a political issue."

Doctors are not politicians. They work to save lives and they are the experts on how to do that. If they all agree that existing programs are working, and some politician disagrees, then he is just wrong and he should shut up.

The drug war debate is ugly and that's not gonna change anytime soon. But one thing we can do without is politicians feigning moral superiority over the doctors who are saving lives every day. That's what this is about. Harm reduction shouldn't be a political issue and if you succeed in politicizing it for the wrong reasons, people will die.

Today, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released a new study that perfectly demolishes one of the central myths underlying the war on drugs. The National Survey on American Attitudes on Substance Abuse shows that youth access to marijuana has increased significantly in the past year:

According to the report, half of the 16- and 17-year-olds surveyed said their peers use marijuana more than tobacco. More teens say it’s easier to acquire marijuana than beer. And there’s a 35% increase from last year in the number of teens who say they can buy marijuana within an hour and a 14% increase in the number of teens who say they can find it in a day. [MPP]

It almost speaks for itself. Nothing could more directly obliterate the false notion that the war on marijuana is reducing youth access. Just days ago, the drug czar stood on a California mountaintop proudly pronouncing the importance of marijuana eradication. He's bent over backwards to explain that reductions in youth marijuana use provide proof that the war on marijuana is working.

What then can be said about marijuana's ever-increasing availability to young people? Rather obviously, recent declines in youth marijuana use owe nothing to the brutal and controversial tactics the drug czar is duty-bound to defend. After another year of dead dogs, dead informants and dead cops, marijuana is more available to our children than ever before. If fewer of them are using, then that is because they don't feel like it, not because they don't know where to get any.

Of course, the drug war supporters at CASA must have realized how badly their data reflects on marijuana prohibition, so they cooked up one the most embarrassingly backwards statistics possible:

Teens who can obtain marijuana readily are more likely to use it. Forty-five percent of teens who say they can get marijuana in an hour or less have used the drug, compared to 10 percent of those teens who say it would take them a day to get it and less than one percent of teens who say they would be unable to get it.

Oh, mercy. Is it really necessary to explain that teens who smoke marijuana are more likely to know where to buy it? This is just a crime against the scientific method, a pathetic face-saving ruse to defend marijuana prohibition within a report that unintentionally – yet transparently -- humiliates the drug war status quo.

Today, the drug war's failure to keep drugs out of the hands of our young people has been revealed in stark, unambiguous terms. No, the debate won't end here, but it is moments like this that cause one drug warrior after another, after another to jump ship and admit that the whole thing is just a monumental travesty.

Julian Critchley was director of the British Cabinet's anti-drug office, where he worked with the British drug tsar to coordinate the nation's drug policy. Now he's come forward to unmask the fraudulent underpinnings of the drug war bureaucracy, simultaneously acknowledging the failure of the war on drugs, while also revealing the hypocrisy of countless officials who carried out policies they personally didn't believe in.

His words now expose the harsh reality that even top "anti-drug" officials privately agree that the drug war is a costly failure:

"I think what was truly depressing about my time in UKADCU was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, government and voluntary sectors held the same view : the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those intelligent, knowledgeable people were forced to repeat the nonsensical mantra that the Government would be 'tough on drugs', even though they all knew that the Government's policy was actually causing harm." [Guardian]

Critchley isn't the first top drug warrior to come forward in favor of reform, but his scathing indictment of the ideological fraud carried out by those maintaining the drug war infrastructure is truly remarkable:

I recall a conversation I had with a No 10 policy advisor about a series of Whitehall-wide announcements in which we were to emphasise the shift of resources to treatment and highlighting successes in prevention and education. She asked me whether we couldn't arrange for a drugs bust in Brighton at the same time, or a boat speeding down the Thames to catch smugglers. For that advisor, what worked mattered considerably less than what would play well in the Daily Mail. The tragedy of our drugs policy is that it is dictated by tabloid irrationality, and not by reference to evidence. [BBC]

Does that sound familiar? This is just the reality of the modern war on drugs both here and abroad. While a committed few may still cling in desperation to the drug war's fractured legacy, the continuation of unambiguously disastrous policies owes a great deal to the perverted political calculations of countless cynical bureaucrats. A sensationalist press then markets these false philosophies to the public, fueling widespread hysteria and confusion. It is within that vast cauldron of selfishness and incompetence that our drug policies have been sustained against all odds.

But today it has been revealed that the interests of the people were jettisoned willfully and maliciously by those who swore an oath to defend the public interest. Time will tell whether that narrative may soon embed itself within the broader debate. This is the story of the true values and beliefs of the great drug war generals and it must not be forgotten when those same individuals inevitably return to demand further sacrifices in honor of their despicable war.

He just can't help himself. It's hilarious, of course, but it's disturbing to consider that Colbert's facetious rants really aren't any more absurd than the typical government propaganda that emerges from the Drug Czar's office. Colbert is joking, but even if he weren't, we could at least stop paying for cable. This garbage, on the other hand is paid for with our tax dollars whether we like it or not. And it isn’t nearly as funny, either.

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr is the first presidential hopeful to speak out regarding the brutal drug raid in Berwyn Heights, MD that resulted in the death of the mayor's two dogs:

The former Republican Congressman from Georgia released a statement on his presidential campaign website about the July 29 Prince George's police and sheriff's raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo.
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The raid, he wrote, "illustrates how the drug war threatens the liberties of all Americans."

He said he believed that law enforcement has become more arrogant and less accountable, usually with very little public attention, and promises that as president, he will improve the situation.

"As president I will ensure that federal law enforcement agencies set a good example for the rest of the country," he said. "In a Barr administration, government officials will never forget that it is a free people they are protecting." [Washington Post]

I'm still getting used to hearing words like these from former drug warrior Bob Barr, but I'll take it. Barr, despite his unfortunate history, is now speaking out against abusive drug war policing with a vigor unmatched, or even attempted, by the major party candidates.

Unfortunately, we can be reasonably sure we won’t hear a word about this from Obama or McCain. Sure, it is an ugly national controversy with a fairly obvious right and wrong side. And yes, a careful statement promising to defend the rights of innocent, everyday people against government abuse would be politically safe, in and of itself. After all, there's nothing anti-police about standing up for professionalism in law-enforcement.

But implicit in all this is the central question of how far we as a society are willing to push the limits of peace and freedom in the name of a war on drugs that has already exhausted many of us to the point of unrestrained bitterness. It's a conversation that can't be avoided once Cheye Calvo's name is spoken and one which the major party candidates remain hesitant to explore. Their silence becomes increasingly hard to explain as it becomes steadily more apparent each day that the drug war blood bath sometimes doesn't discriminate as well as it's supposed to.

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

The more "progress" Mexico makes in its U.S.-funded war on drugs, the more of this sort of thing we can look forward to:

TIJUANA, Mexico, Aug 12 (Reuters) - American businesswoman Veronica was stepping out of her car in California when two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, pushed her teenage daughter into the back and drove them into Mexico.

Taking advantage of lax Mexican security at the San Diego border, and with U.S. authorities focused mainly on those entering the United States, the kidnappers took the two women to Tijuana in January and held them for a month before their family paid a $100,000 ransom.
…

An unintended consequence of Mexican efforts to weaken drug gangs, drug traffickers around Tijuana are turning to abducting U.S. citizens and residents in southern California and holding them in Mexico as a new way to get funds, U.S. and Mexican authorities say. [Reuters]

This is precisely why there is no such thing as progress in the drug war. The enemy doesn’t give a f$%k about anything. The harder you push, the harder they push back. New criminal opportunities emerge within the culture of violence and corruption the drug war produces and we haven't seen a fraction of the brutality that's in store for Mexican and American citizens if our governments insist on fighting this out in the streets.

The concept is simple: the harder we try to win the drug war, the greater the crime and violence we must endure. There is no threshold to be crossed, no day of reckoning for the warlords we've nurtured and empowered by placing an infinite tax-free economy in their icy death grip.

Just watch as violence against Americans leads to calls for more drug war funding, which in turn leads to more violence against Americans. The drug war itself is the coal that sustains this raging fire and anyone preferring to believe otherwise should probably just go ahead and turn off their TV.

In the wake of the acquittal of the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team member who killed Tarika Wilson -- and with DC-area local Mayor Cheye Calvo pressing the issue of SWAT raids following the killing of his two dogs -- it bears reminding what the root cause was of both these horrible events and of many others -- a stupid, reckless, cowboy mentality, in which law enforcers who are supposed to be protecting us think it's fun and games until someone loses an eye (or a life).

I've posted the following graphic before, but I'm posting it again, because it says it all. It appeared at the top of the Lima SWAT team's web page prior to the Wilson killing, before they took it down:

Any questions?

Radley Balko points out this remark from Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, which I think ranks among the best commentary we've heard in the press following a botched raid:

"The reality is that this happens all the time in this country and disproportionally in Prince Georges county and most of the people to whom it happens don’t have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition but I hope you’ll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have." [CNN video via Rawstory]

This was broadcast nationally on CNN, which clearly takes the paramilitary drug raid controversy to a level we haven't seen previously. Unfortunately, the rise of this issue from a frequent topic at drug policy and libertarian blogs to a full-blown national concern has followed the path many of us reluctantly predicted: something horrible had to happen to an appropriate spokesperson.

We knew it was just matter of time, but I wasn't expecting it to come so soon. Maybe I should have. In the short-term, we can look forward to likely reforms in Prince George's County and hopefully even at the state-level in Maryland. But what this means in the long-term is that future incidents carry greater potential to be recognized by the press as part of a disturbing pattern. Too often, botched drug raids generate obligatory local media, while the larger issue goes unaddressed. Bloody fiascos are dismissed as isolated incidents only to be forgotten and eventually repeated.

Let it therefore be understood now and remembered when the time comes that there is nothing isolated or unusual about innocent people and pets being shot during poorly executed drug raids. It happens all the time and this latest controversy should provide an ample imperative for those covering such incidents in the future to connect the appropriate dots.

One of the few remaining tactics for effectively defending our marijuana laws is to prevent them from even being discussed:

The TV program is titled "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation," but it's unlikely many viewers of network stations will be talking about it.

Of the three local network stations, only one agreed to run the show, produced by the American Civil Liberties Union and hosted by travel writer Rick Steves. [Seattle Times]

Ack, we mustn't expose anyone to the crazy ideas of Rick Steves! Wait, isn't he that really nice Lutheran guy who hosts a popular travel show on public television? So then why should we be terrified of him?

Jim Clayton, vice president and general manager at KOMO, the ABC affiliate, refused to sell time. The show, he said, promoted marijuana use.

"The last I checked, it's illegal," Clayton said. "We don't use our public airways to promote illegal things."

Um, pardon me sir, but we're actually trying to massively reduce illegal activity. I wouldn’t have thought this to be intellectually challenging, but if we were to change our marijuana laws, then it wouldn't be illegal. See? This doesn’t promote illegal activity. Marijuana laws create illegal activity and we'd like to discuss that.

Of course, marijuana reformers are constantly accused of childishness. We are dismissed as self-interested hippies waiving the banner of personal freedom whenever it suits us, while refusing to engage in serious conversations about empirical data and sound public policy. Yet, what can be said about those who serve as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas and abuse their authority by arbitrarily blocking discussion of ideas they find objectionable?

In truth, it is often opponents of the reform argument who act childishly, feigning irrational concerns that simply permitting debate will somehow aggravate the drug problem. Such behavior must be recognized for what it is: a great insult to the intelligence of the public.

PolitickerMD sent us a copy of their latest editorial cartoon, about the killing of two dogs by a Prince Georges County, Maryland, SWAT team:

Click here for the original article.

By the way, the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team, whose officer was just acquitted for the killing of Tarika Wilson and the maiming of her infant child, killed two dogs too. They shot people on one floor and dogs (pit bulls) on another.

To be fair, the guy they were targeting supposedly unleashed the pit bulls on the officers who came after him downstairs. But that's no excuse -- he was defending himself from invaders of unknown nature who as far as he could tell intended to kill him -- had they not sent in a SWAT team for this minor situation, none of it would have happened at all.

Fairness requires that I call attention to Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann's excellent piece, America's never-ending prohibition. I've been critical of marijuana coverage at Reuters in the past, so I was pleased to see this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's alcohol prohibition lasted 13 years, filled the country's prisons, inspired contempt for the law among millions, bred corruption and produced Al Capone. What it did not do was keep Americans from drinking.

America's marijuana prohibition drew into its 72nd year this month. It has created a huge underground industry catering to users, helped the U.S. prison population balloon into the world's largest, and diverted the resources of American law enforcement. What it has not done is keep Americans from using marijuana.

On the contrary. Since 1937, the year marijuana was outlawed, its use in the United States has gone up by 4,000 percent, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based lobby group which advocates regulating the drug similar to alcohol. A recent World Health Organization study of marijuana use in 17 countries placed Americans at the top of the list.

Indeed. Rather than measuring the drug war's success by comparing today's rates of drug use to their highest point in history, the drug czar should be comparing today's usage rates to what they were before we started this mindless crusade.

The fallout following Rachel Hoffman's murder is becoming intense. DEA has refused to allow three agents to testify before a grand jury regarding their involvement in the case, resulting in a surprising backlash from the State Attorney's office:

State Attorney Willie Meggs has told the Tallahassee Democrat that his decision to no longer prosecute cases involving the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is, "probably more symbolic than it is substantive, but I am very serious about it."

He went on to say, "I'm just not going to play that little game with those folks. I don’t need them and if these agencies want to work with them and do their cases with them, that's fine." [Tallahassee Democrat]

Strong words indeed. This sort of vitriol is rarely exchanged between drug warriors and it seems to indicate a drawing of battlelines as we wait to see who'll be held to account for this now-legendary drug war f#%k-up.

Mark R. Trouville, DEA's Special Agent in Charge of the Miami Field Division, predictably blamed his officers' non-compliance on a technicality:

We feel it is important for the public to know that DEA did not refuse to testify before the grand jury in this case. Although notified both verbally and in writing by DEA, the State Attorney’s Office refused to comply with Department of Justice regulations (which have been respected by the Florida Supreme Court) and therefore DEA Agents did not receive authorization to testify before the grand jury. In order to comply, the State Attorney’s Office simply needed to issue a subpoena and provide the local United States Attorney’s Office a summary of the information sought and its relevance to the proceeding.

This is the same guy who once claimed that today's marijuana "will kill you," so he has all the credibility of a drunk frat-boy on April Fool's Day. Thus I lean towards the assumption that DEA is covering its ass, which would explain why State Attorney Meggs is raging pissed.

To be honest though, I'm really not quite sure what the hell is going on here. I don't understand DEA's role in the murder because they won't testify, but in hindsight the fact that Rachel was told to purchase 1,500 pills of ecstasy, 2 ounces of crack cocaine and a gun sure gives the impression that DEA may have been calling the shots. The conspicuously large order Rachel placed had a great deal to do with her cover being blown, so to whatever extent DEA may have been responsible for that, they would be equally responsible for the fatal outcome.

Ultimately, many people made many errors contributing to this horrible event, but we all know that it takes more than a few greedy cops to manufacture a tragedy as compelling and gut-wrenching as this. After the finger-pointing subsides, after a few sacrificial reassignments, re-trainings and procedural revisions, the war that killed Rachel Hoffman will rage on without missing a beat. The culture of threats and manipulation that characterizes modern drug enforcement will remain intact and the mentality that led to Rachel's death will continue to guide police as they take on the drug problem with handcuffs in one hand and a gun in the other.

The botched drug raid fiasco in Berwyn Heights, MD grows more embarrassing for Prince George's County police everyday. Their theory is now that a deliveryman was planning on intercepting the package:

Prince George's Police Chief Melvin C. High did not apologize to the Calvos or exonerate them completely in the case. However, he said police have discovered five or six other similar deliveries made in recent days to addresses where people inside had no knowledge of the delivery. He said he believed the Calvos were "likely" innocent but that police continue to investigate. [Washington Post]

It bothers me to no end that this whole mess seems to hinge in many people's minds on the ultimate determination of whether or not the Calvos had anything to do with the marijuana. While I agree that the destruction of innocent lives and property is one of the most disturbing consequences of our wildly out-of-control war on drugs, I think Police Chief High (don't laugh, not funny) is missing the point.

His officers shot two black Labradors, one of which was running away. It's just barbaric. A source who attended a memorial service for the dogs learned that the raiding officers didn’t even know the homeowner was the mayor until they began interrogating him. The point isn’t that he deserved special treatment, but rather that police didn’t even conduct a basic investigation of their suspects. They went in blind, and their subsequent violent actions owe much to the ignorance that guided them throughout the process. This type of policing is unacceptable categorically and without regard to one's occupation or even their involvement in drugs.

Worse yet, there's absolutely nothing unique or exceptional about any of it. As this very story unfolded we learned that a Lima, OH officer was acquitted of negligence charges after shooting a baby and killing her unarmed mother in a drug raid. He literally used the excuse that the sound of his fellow officers shooting dogs downstairs startled him, causing him to shoot at a shadow. That shadow turned out to be Tarika Wilson, who he killed while also shooting her baby's finger off.

Horrible drug raid stories have become vastly more common than they ought to be. The patterns are disturbingly familiar, the excuses are disturbingly unpersuasive, and the next similar disaster will occur disturbingly soon. Just watch.

The highly controversial Charles Lynch trial has reached a disappointing conclusion:

The owner of a Morro Bay marijuana dispensary was found guilty today in federal court of five counts of distributing drugs.

Charles Lynch, the owner of the dispensary, faces a minimum of five years in prison.

His closely watched trial involved conflicting marijuana laws and went to a federal court jury Monday. Jurors were asked to determine if Lynch was guilty of violating federal drug laws.

During a week-and-a-half-long trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, federal prosecutors sought to depict Lynch as a common drug dealer who sold pot to teenagers and carried a backpack stuffed with cash.

Lynch was charged with distributing marijuana, conspiring to distribute marijuana and providing marijuana to people under the age of 21. [LA Times}

Like other medical marijuana convictions, federal prosecutors were only able to prevail by blocking testimony about medical marijuana and misleading jurors about the true nature of the defendant's actions. reason.tv tells the truth about the Lynch case here:

Fortunately, while the federal government can lie to a jury, they cannot conceal their contemptuous conduct from a public already sickened by the vicious and embarrassing war on medical marijuana patients and providers. Their manipulative tactics will be fully exposed in the aftermath of today's result and will be greeted with the same widespread disgust that has characterized past persecutions prosecutions.

We must never mistake today's events for anything but what they are: a pathetic and purely symbolic attempt to obscure the obvious benefits of state medical marijuana laws. They are powerless against the tide of public opinion and the booming industry that has spawned amidst their intransigence. They now resort to petty martyrings, the brutal last resort of a disgraced tyrant, in the fading hope of intimidating a nation that has embraced democracy itself to subvert their hideous war.

Even in its hour of victory, the war on medical marijuana shivers naked before us, spitting desperately into the eyes of a public whose support it lost long ago.

Taking people's cars against their will is, of course, not a crime when police do it:

A new push by Annapolis police officers to crack down on drugs and violence in the city is having an added benefit: Record vehicle seizures and revenues.

Sgt. Dave Garcia, who oversees the vehicle seizure program, said city police seized 120 vehicles in the first six months of this year, netting $23,960 in the process.
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Sgt. Garcia said when the city began its seizure program, officers had discretion on whether to seize a vehicle. About a decade ago, however, the department adopted the zero-tolerance policy.

"We wanted it to be fair for everyone," he said, explaining now it doesn't matter if the officer finds a glass pipe for smoking crack or a kilo of heroin - the city will take your car. [hometownannapolis.com]

It is just amazing what the term "fair for everyone" can mean to a narcotics officer. It disturbs me greatly that police can even say things like that in our newspapers without provoking massive public outcry.

As one might guess, the program serves no crime control function and accomplishes nothing other than funding the process of busting more people and taking more cars:

It is unclear if the seizures actually are deterring anything, though. The city seized about 170 vehicles a year for the past three years, only to see record numbers of murders and robberies.

"Is the message getting across the way we like? Probably not," Sgt. Garcia said. But he noted police rarely seize the same car twice, and the money the city makes on the seizures helps buy new surveillance equipment, computers and unmarked cars for the city Police Department. All of the seizure money goes to a special fund maintained by the department.

"They are helping us fund our war against drugs," he said.

The article goes on to describe how citizens may purchase their cars back for hundreds of dollars, but only if they agree not to contest the seizure. In other words, if you're innocent, you have to risk losing your car entirely in order to challenge your false arrest and the confiscation of your vehicle.

Once again, we find the soldiers in our war on drugs engaged in behavior that would be a serious crime if anyone else did it. This is just pure extortion carried out against a large group of people who haven’t yet been convicted of any crime. Police then parade around exclaiming that they are helping people solve their drug problems, as though taking people's property and selling it back to them is some form of drug treatment. It's not.

If these are the sorts of ideas we're coming up with for addressing our nation's drug problem, it's time to include more people in the discussion.

Looks like there will be no accountability or apologies for one of this year's worst botched drug raids:

A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.
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Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child's fingers had to be amputated.
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Chavalia, an officer of 32-years, had testified that he thought his life was in danger when he fired the shots. He said he saw a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door and heard gunshots that he thought were aimed at him. It turned out the gunfire he heard was coming from downstairs, where officers shot two charging pit bulls. [ABCNews]

So police shooting innocent dogs downstairs became an excuse for police shooting innocent people upstairs. I'm never surprised to see a jury (an all-white jury, no less) ruling in favor of police in a case like this. Still, I can’t get over the officer's admitted failure to even observe what he was shooting at. An officer who panics and fires at "a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door" is incompetent at best, but clearly criminal if we're to hold police to anything approaching the same vicious standards applied to civilians in these raids.

I shudder to contemplate the sort of carnage it may require to get out the message that modern drug war police tactics are not a necessary precaution, but rather a genuine and growing threat to public safety.