With the West's occupation of Afghanistan now nearing the seven-year mark and plagued by an increasingly powerful and deadly insurgency revitalized by massive profits from the opium trade, Western

In an object lesson on the unintended consequences of drug prohibition enforcement, police in Dunde

A key Coast Guard anti-drug fighter gets caught doing cocaine, plus the usual array of miscreants in blue.

In its 2000 decision in Indianapolis v.

Kenneth Rau, the Bismarck, North Dakota, man with the dubious distinction of being the first person to be charged with a salvia divinorum possession offense in the US, got some good news last week.

Petitioners for an initiative making adult marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority on Hawaii's pot-friendly Big Island failed to gather enough valid signatures to qualify for the Nov

According to Mexican press reports this week, Mexico's Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD -- Democratic Revolution Party) is preparing to consider legalization of the drug trade as a respo

Cops "misplacing" money, cops providing help to a pot crew, a court security officer peddling pain pills, and a jail guard getting caught bringing in the goodies.

Former Republican Congressman and current Libertarian Party Candidate for president Bob Barr Monday issued a statement criticizing the widely

Kenneth Rau, the Bismarck, North Dakota, man who suffers the dubious distinction of being the first pe

In June, foes of Mendocino County, California's relaxed marijuana cultivation ordinance, managed to narrowly r

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.
…

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.)

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.

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.

DEA agents are in Vietnam this month to train Vietnamese anti-drug officers how to conduct drug raids American-style, but local UN officials say you can't police your way out of a drug problem.

Indonesia's harsh drug laws have not succeeded in stopping illicit drug use in the Southeast Asian archipelago, and now some of the people those laws are aimed at are speaking out.

A Boston cop goes to prison for being muscle for drug dealers, and a Miami-area cop and two prison guards get caught up in a massive Oxycontin and health fraud scandal. Let's get to it:

In a trial that garnered national attention because of the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws, a federal jury in Los Angeles Tuesday convicted the owner of a Morro Bay medical mariju

An all-white jury found Lima, Ohio, Police Sgt.