The Drug Czar is warning everyone about an epidemic of meth-laced ecstasy tablets coming into the country from Canada:

Alarmingly, more than 55 percent of the Ecstasy samples seized in the United States last year contained methamphetamine. Cutting their product with less-expensive methamphetamine boosts profits for Canadian Ecstasy producers, likely increases the addictive potential of their product, and effectively gives a dangerous “face lift” to a designer drug that had fallen out of fashion with young American drug users. [Pushing Back]

I'll tell you whose fault this isn't: mine. See, I don't think ecstasy should even be illegal. I don't want it to be manufactured by drug gangs in Canada, or anyone else who might lace it with methamphetamine or other noxious crap. I think it should be manufactured by licensed professionals and sold to adults through regulated outlets. Many people have been saying this for a long time to no avail and now look what's happened.

So if meth-laced ecstasy isn’t my fault, whose fault is it? Ironically, but rather obviously, it is the fault of the exact people who now complain about all the bad ecstasy rolling across our northern border.

It has become a nauseating chore just to report on all the innocent people that get killed in the drug war. But until our public servants stop killing us to protect us from drugs, the reporting must continue:

Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and her 1-year-old son was wounded when Lima police conducted a drug raid on their home Friday night, prompting members of the black community to organize a candlelight vigil and demand answers from police.

"They shot my daughter and her baby," Ms. Jennings said through tears while being consoled by other family members. "The police have to pay for what they did. They went in that home shooting and killed her." [Toledo Blade]

Tarika Wilson's boyfriend was arrested for marijuana and crack, but police haven’t reported how much they found. Something tells me this is because the amount is very small. Too small to justify shooting a baby. Similarly, they haven’t said a word about why Ms. Wilson was shot. If they had a good answer, we'd know by now what it is.

Here's the thing: when you hear about police shooting a baby and killing an innocent mother of six, you just know the drug war had something to do with it. Overwhelmingly, it is the drug war that sends adrenalin-charged cops into private homes with their fingers on the trigger of a machine gun. In a post-drug war world, babies and grandmas won't get shot in their houses by police. I can't wait.

More at DrugWarRant and The Agitator.

Jeralyn Merritt provides an overview of Barack Obama's record on criminal justice and drug policy issues, on the TalkLeft blog.

There are "good guys" and "bad guys" in Congress. More accurately, perhaps, there are members of Congress who do good things at least some of the time, and members of Congress who do bad things some of the time. Among the latest good guys are Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, and 32 cosponsors of her bill H.R. 4545, the "Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007," introduced 12/13. H.R. 4545 would ameliorate some of the atrocity that is federal mandatory minimum sentencing by reducing crack cocaine penalties to equal those existing for powder cocaine. The Supreme Court ruling and the Sentencing Commission recommendations that came down recently don't help with the mandatory minimums, but only help with sentencing guidelines cases. The bill also includes language intended to focus federal drug enforcement activity on high-level players instead of small-timers as they do now. One of the latest bad guys is Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican also of Texas, the sponsor of H.R. 4842, introduced 12/19, a nasty bill to reverse the Sentencing Commission's positive ruling in favor of making the recent crack sentencing reductions retroactive. Smith only has eight cosponsors, as compared with Jackson-Lee's 32, and Jackson-Lee has the chairman of the subcommittee of Judiciary that would consider it, Bobby Scott (D-VA). I don't see John Conyers (D-MI) on there yet, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee itself, but he's just as much on our side as Scott is. I don't think Smith has much of a chance on this one, but you never know. Jackson-Lee has been a strong support of our efforts repealing the Higher Education Act's drug provision, and spoke at our 2005 press conference: