Executive Branch

good riddance, let us hope

We have not previously commented here about the US Attorneys firing controversy (or scandal, depending on how one looks at it) -- mostly because drug policy has not come up in it -- partly because we assume that both the people who got canned and the people replacing them are all all likely to be serious SOBs from our point of view. For example, it was one of the firees, San Diego's Carol Lam, who prosecuted medical marijuana provider Steve McWilliams, an act that ended in McWilliams' suicide. Readers who have followed the pain issue will doubtless be interested to know that the guy who prosecuted pain physician Dr. Hurwitz, Paul McNulty, and who was responsible for the infamous withdrawal by the DEA during that prosecution of the pain FAQ it had worked together on with doctors and other experts, is in serious hot water. McNulty was the US Attorney for eastern Virginia at the time, but was subsequently promoted to the #2 spot at DOJ. According to his official bio he played a key role in abolishing parole in Virginia in 1994. McNulty's name has come up on and off within the firings matter since early on, but until this evening it seemed like he might survive it and quite possibly become the next Attorney General. But things have shifted again in this fast-changing story. According to the Politico, in a story filed at 9:06 EST:

Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales.

Let's hope the reporting about McNulty at least is on target. Whatever the cause for his career's abrupt ending, it will be a good thing. McNulty's actions in the Hurwitz case caused incalculable damage to the cause of pain management with opioids for patients who need it -- effectively he caused large numbers of pain patients to be tortured through denial of medication or under-use of it. Having met Dr. Hurwitz a number of times, and counting a number of his former patients friends, I could be biased about that -- though his conviction has since been overturned due to the trial flaws that prosecutors and the judge created. But I think McNulty's instigation of the withdrawal of the FAQ demonstrates objectively that he is willing to attack the rule of law itself if it suits his purposes. No tears shed for this guy's career, none deserved -- good riddance to at least one really, really cruel, unethical and dishonest prosecutor.

As blowhards like Lou Dobbs call for escalation in the war on drugs, even the White House is singing a different tune. From The Washington Times:

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- President Bush's new budget calls for deep cuts in the leading U.S. program to fight drug trafficking in the Andean region, amid growing clashes over drug policy between Washington and leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia.
…

"It would be the largest across-the-board reduction in aid since the war on drugs began," said one U.S. diplomatic official, who asked not to be named.

It's refreshing to see ordinarily smug drug warriors decline to be named. That's to be expected when their opposition comes from the White House rather than the drug policy reform movement.

There's nothing to debate here. The Andean Counterdrug Initiative has failed utterly and everyone knows it. It has caused great devastation, but the one thing it has not done is reduce the availability of drugs in the U.S.

Meanwhile, The Miami Herald reports that Ecuador is evicting U.S. anti-drug forces from our only military stronghold in South America.

They are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where the Bush administration now has few reliable allies.

''We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil,'' Correa said.

This is the kind of humiliating defeat that makes drug war addicts like Joe Biden call for biological warfare in South America. It's a reminder that the drug war won’t end with a public apology, but rather a quiet-as-possible reallocation of funds.

When the war finally ends, it will be at the hands of Congress and the Executive branch. It won’t be at the hands of the "deep-pocketed pro-drug lobby," for there truly is no such thing. We're just a group of people who recognize, as even the White House sometimes does, that there are always better things to do with a billion dollars than trying to stop people from getting high.

According to the Associated Press, President Bush issued 16 pardons yesterday, including one sentence commutation. Six of them including the commutation were for drug offenses. (For those of you who are not familiar with this, a pardon can simply mean that an old offense is wiped off of one's record -- feels good, may help with employment and other matters, but the individual was already finished with any incarceration that was part of the sentence.) A commutation is when someone actually gets out early or finishes parole or probation early. According to the AP:

Bush also granted a commutation of sentence to Phillip Anthony Emmert of Washington, Iowa, whose case involved conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. He was sentenced Dec. 23, 1992, to 262 months’ imprisonment (reduced on Feb. 21, 1996) and five years’ supervised release. Bush directed that Emmert’s sentence expire on this coming Jan. 20, but left the supervised release intact.

Please contact the White House to let them know that: 1) We're glad he's releasing Phillip Emmert; 2) One commutation is nowhere near good enough. The president should release more nonviolent drug offenders this year! Just a few of the more well known ones: Weldon Angelos, Clarence Aaron, Lawrence & Lamont Garrison.

Now it seems that one of the officers involved in the deadly "drug raid" in Atlanta last week previously lied about an incident in which he caused a head-on car crash. Yet the Atlanta police kept him on the force, and his "credibility" was good enough to get a no-knock warrant to break down someone's door. Also, the confidential informant is no longer confidential, somehow. But why? Read Radley Balko's analysis in The Agitator.

Spurred by the federal government's crackdown on prescription drug abuse, doctors around the country are resorting to "pain contracts" with patients in an attempt to protect themselves from charges they are Dr. Feelgoods. Such contracts typically require the patient to agree that "lost, stolen, or misplaced" drugs are not to be replaced and that the patient agree to be drug tested. Patients who refuse to sign such an agreement or who test positive for non-prescribed drugs--i.e. marijuana--are likely to be cut off.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

I really dislike crossing international borders. I've been doing a lot of it lately in the past few years, particularly since my partner and I got a summer place outside Nelson, BC. Even when I was spending a few weeks or months in Nelson, I was often off to the US—for a meth conference in Salt Lake, the NORML annual conference in San Francisco, to score cheap cigarettes on the Indian reservation in Washington state—or crossing into the US to get to the nearest big time airport to fly off to more exotic locales.