joys of the drug war: Arizona edition

The violence from Mexico is creeping into the states.  Money Quote:

“They send us drugs and people, and we send them guns and cash,” Mr. Paton said in an interview.

Next stop....

the joys of the drug war: unsafe edition

Kathleen Parker makes the case that TWOD actually makes us less safe.  

Indeed, they do. In our peculiar obsession to track down the Willie Nelsons, the Rush Limbaughs and now the Michael Phelpses of society -- nonviolent, victimless imbibers of drugs -- we've actually made society less safe. That's the conclusion of 10,000 cops, prosecutors, judges and others who make up the membership of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Howard Wooldridge, LEAP's Washington representative, is a former cop and detective who lectures civic clubs and congressional staffers on the futility of drug laws that reduce public safety by wasting time and money. He points to child pornography as just one example.

As of last April, he says, law enforcement had identified 623,000 computers containing child pornography, including downloadable video of child rape. Only a fraction of those have been pursued with search warrants, thanks to limited resources and staff shortages. What's worse, Wooldridge says, is that three times out of five a search warrant also produces a child victim on the premises.

Another example: Last year, Human Rights Watch reported that as many as 400,000 rape kits containing evidence were sitting unopened in criminal labs and storage facilities. Between the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. County sheriff's office, nearly 12,000 kits were unopened, according to an NPR report in December.

The sad thing about this is that it should be common sense that locking up more than three quarter of a million people for smoking weed(in 2007) is absurd.  But Jeebus hates drugs, so off we go.

(I will spend the rest of the day perusing the bible to find the exact jeebus qoute on that.)

Update:  100 years of drug war. Weeeeeee!

boycott kellogg's

Michael Phelp's backlash.  Join the Facebook group.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

the joys of the drug war: fuck the police edition

This is awesome.  One of main unintended concequences that the drug war produces is the loss of respect for the law and agents of the law.  This is because it turns police from protectors of the law to breakers of the law. Just sayin'.

Here is the video.

the joys of the drug war: Mexico edition

I don't even have anything snarky to say about this.

The sedated patient, his bullet wounds still fresh from a shootout the night before, was lying on a gurney in the intensive care unit of a prestigious private hospital here late last month with intravenous fluids dripping into his arm. Suddenly, steel-faced gunmen barged in and filled him with even more bullets. This time, he was dead for sure.

Drug war, FAIL.