Interdiction

It's horrible because it's true:

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean laboratory that produced the world's first cloned dogs is looking to get into the business of cloning canines, first by cloning drug-sniffing dogs, a lab official said on Tuesday.

The laboratory at Seoul National University, implicated in a scandal for fabricating data in embryonic stem cell studies, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Customs Service to clone drug-sniffing dogs, said Kim Min-kyu, the researcher who heads the cloning project for the team. [Reuters]

You've gotta hand it to these guys. What better way to overcome the ethical dilemmas facing the cloning industry than by getting involved in the drug war, where ethics are all but unheard of.

There's something brilliantly Orwellian about armies of drug-sniffing dog clones chasing hippies and snarling at school children. It's just a matter of time until they build robots to do that, and when that happens I just don't know what I'm gonna do. The big-time crooks will have their own robots to commit crimes for them, so our prisons will be filled with poor suckers who couldn’t afford a Stash-Bot 6000 to take the rap.

For the time being, it's worth noting that cloning in the drug war is nothing new. Anonymous sources have informed me that the new ONDCP documentary Stoners in the Mist is actually cloned from the original Reefer Madness, and drug war mouthpiece Mark Souder is actually cloned from red-scare fear-monger Joseph McCarthy.

Ok, they were dogs, but it's still funny…

Two of Thailand's top canine agents in the country's war against drugs have been fired for "unbecoming conduct" that included urinating on luggage and rubbing up against female airport passengers.

Despite having two of the highest seizure rates on record, the sniffer dogs working at an airport near the notorious "Golden Triangle" opium-producing region were fired after passengers complained about their behaviour. [CBC News]

So in Thailand, police dogs pee on luggage and get fired. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., an utterly incompetent human narc can terrorize innocent people and get off with a one-day suspension.

It's particularly galling considering that dogs are expected to pee on stuff, whereas police officers certainly aren’t expected to terrorize the innocent. Or are they? The way today's public officials react to gratuitous police violence, you could easily expect more concern from a pet owner who finds a mess on the rug.

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the punishment for police peeing on someone's belongings during a wrong address drug raid were remarkably lenient. And unfortunately, at this pace, I'm sure we'll have a chance to find out what it is before long.

Q: Which is worse, an incontinent dog or an incompetent cop?

A: The cop. He'll shoot your dog, at which point it will inevitably release its bowels anyway.

Local law enforcement narcotics agents now have a new tool in the fight against drugs.

Med Life Ambulance Service has donated a used ambulance to serve as an enforcement vehicle for narcotics agents.

The unit will be used by the Bastrop Police Department and Morehouse Parish Sheriff's Office during narcotics investigations and in the course of executing search warrants. [Daily Enterprise]

Ok, rule number one for conducting narcotics investigations from an ambulance: don't tell everyone about it beforehand. I can't think of anything less discrete than doing a stakeout in a gigantic ambulance. Especially now that the ambulance is famous.

Moreover, ambulances with always be better equipped to help people with drug problems than tactical narcotics vehicles.

Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Hans Hertell says the Dominican Republic is our "most important ally" in the war on drugs. He might be right, but how pathetic is that?

Our biggest ally in the collosal U.S. drug war is a tiny island nation in the Caribbean? I guess it depends what he means by "important," because the Dominican Republic is hardly a glowing example of progress in the international drug war. The fact that it's becoming more important isn't a good thing.

According to the State Department, "in 2006, the DR saw a surge in air smuggling of cocaine out of Venezuela." Google news has several articles on increased drug trafficking activity there. And there might be even more news on drug activity in the Dominican Republic if drug traffickers weren't threatening to burn Dominican journalists alive.

But the Dominican government loves U.S. drug war money, and President Leonel Fernandez accused us of negligence just three weeks ago for not giving him more of it. It's almost like he has an incentive to maintain a baseline of drug activity, while claiming an entitlement to U.S. tax-dollars to combat the problem.

The U.S. and its drug war allies are the most drug-infested nations in the world. "We're almost there!" they exclaim, with self-congratulatory zeal, like lemmings on a glorious march to the clifftop.

Actual progress is possible once we start doing the opposite of most things we've been doing.

This ugly story provides a frightening example of the sordid relationships our government maintains when conducting international narcotics investigations.

The Vigo County prosecutor’s office, the Terre Haute Police Department and Vigo County Sheriff’s Department will be conducting intermittent driver’s license checks at an undisclosed location in Vigo County.

When I hear that Indiana police are conducting “driver’s license checks”, my constitutional spidey-sense goes off. Afterall, these are the folks who brought us the drug checkpoint. And when that got overruled by the Supreme Court, they came out with the similar, but more sinister “fake drug checkpoint.”