MarijuanaNews.com : What Is the Real Strategy Behind the Czar’s “Strategy ”? 40,000 SWAT Raids Per Year. One In Nine Young Black Males (20 To 34) Are Locked Up.

Posted March 10, 2008
Analysis by Richard Cowan

Last week, I heroically risked permanent brain damage by writing three articles about the Drug Czar’s so-called 2008 National Drug Control Strategy…

See
Guess Who Said , “The decrease in the abuse of cannabis among youth in the United States may be offset by an increase in the abuse of prescription drugs.” Iron Law Of Prohibition” &. Czar’s Strategy 3
and

Czar’s “Strategy” On Medical Marijuana Aimed At Justifying Raids On Dispensaries. National Drug Control Strategy 2008 Part Deux “The Medical Marijuana Movement Manipulation, Not Medicine”
and

Old Lies in A New Package. Drug Czar’s “2008 National Drug Control Strategy” Again Demonstrates the Drug War Is Really A War on Cannabis Users. Part One “Potency”

And not for the first time, see

UN Nark’s Speech To Swedish Prohibitionists May Cause Permanent Brain Damage. Illogic, Ignorance and Lying, Especially About the Dutch, Of Course.

Fortunately, I have access to an herbal remedy that has been shown to protect against just such trauma.

See
Marijuana Derivative Blocks Irreversible Brain Damage After Accidents; Another Way Marijuana Prohibition Kills

and

Cannabis May Prevent Brain Damage From Strokes; Slow Progress of Alzheimers and Parkinsonism. DEAland National Institute of Mental Health Study, But Reported In British Media

Alright, I am being facetious, and just reading it will not cause brain damage, but its implementation has caused brain death around the world. As I pointed out in the analysis of the section on medical cannabis, its clear purpose is to justify raids on California dispensaries.

See

Learning About Prohibitionism: House Debate on Medical Marijuana Bill Offers New Insight Into Police State Ideology.

and

Science, Democracy, Ideology and the Prohibitionist Police State. Marijuana Use Doesn’t Hurt “Thinking Skills” But Prohibition Does. Analysis by Richard Cowan

However, it is also clear that the whole “strategy” has nothing to do with the actual “control” of “drugs”, and everything to do with the justification of violence at home and around the world.

Over the years, I have written about individual instances of Drug War violence in America and elsewhere, as well as the systematic violence in Mexico.

From January 2000, see

Family Of Malibu Millionaire Murdered In 1992 By Narks Trying to Steal His Ranch Will Be Given $5 Million Because Officials “feared jurors would not believe government agents.”
and
Police Raid Home Of Disabled Medical Marijuana Advocate, Jacki Rickert. Search All Night.
and
Media Reports On Rickert Raid Make Viciousness Look Bad. What’s A Nark To Do?
and
Disabled Vet and Wife Held at Gunpoint By Narks Who Seize Their Medical Marijuana Plants. – In Washington State, Which Has A Medical Marijuana Law.
and
Laguna Beach Mayor Backs Police Policy of Using SWAT Teams Against Even One Medical Marijuana Plant

and

Great Journalism on Outrageous Case Shows Why the People of Colorado Support Medical Marijuana Initiative.

And from Canada in 1998, see

“Why is it that SWAT teams are being used on a daily basis,

sometimes several times a day for drug raids for marijuana?”

and from New Zealand
Police State Tactics in New Zealand Mill Raid.
and in Mexico

New York Times Cheers “MEXICO TO JOIN US IN FIGHT ON DRUGS – Treaty is expected to cut down smuggling across border and break up gangs of dealers.” We Couldn’t Make This Up!

Of course, as the narks like to say about thousands of people benefiting from medical cannabis, these are merely “anecdotal” reports.

However, today as I was trying to pull all of this together I found another outstanding article by the inestimable Radley Balco on Reason’s Hit&Run Blog .

In his posting today about his attempt to find out more about Houston Drug Raid Records

and the misuse of SWAT teams, Balco reported, “I learned that HPD has served about 16,000 forced-entry narcotics warrants in the last four years. The number is an estimate because the warrants are packed up in boxes, and the compliance officer guessed by multiplying the average number of warrants per box by the number of boxes. But it’s not likely off by too much either way.

Eastern Kentucky University’s Peter Kraska surveyed SWAT team deployments ranging from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Kraska estimated that by the end of his survey, SWAT teams were being called out about 40,000 times per year in the U.S., a huge increase from about 3,000 times per year just twenty years prior. That breaks down to about 110 SWAT raids per day.”

This increase in SWAT raids parallels the increase in our prison population over the last 20 years as reported by the Pew Center On the States :

“Twenty years ago, the states collectively spent $10.6 billion of their general funds—their primary discretionary dollars—on corrections. Last year, they spent more than $44 billion in general funds, a 315 percent jump, and more than $49 billion in total funds from all sources. Coupled with tightening state budgets, the greater prison expenditures may force states to make tough choices about where to spend their money. For example, Pew found that over the same 20-year period, inflation-adjusted general fund spending on corrections rose 127 percent while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent.”

This was part of a major study that received some passing media coverage because it said that one percent of the American adult population is behind bars.

Of course, the so-called African-American leadership was much too busy trying to get their pictures taken with Obama and/or Clinton to object to the fact that one in nine young black males (20 to 34) are locked up.

See
NORML Study Reveals Blacks Arrested For Marijuana At More Than Twice The Rate For Whites

I read a lot of speculation about the reasons for the Drug War, the pharmaceutical companies and medical cannabis, the oil companies and hemp, etc., etc., but let’s just look at what is happening.

Whatever its origins and whatever the reasons may have been in the past, the Drug War and cannabis prohibition in particular has become its own constituency. The police and prosecutors are the ones who show up to oppose any measure – medical cannabis, or decrim, or even just lowering the priority given to arresting people simple possession – that would reduce their power or threaten the prohibitionist ideology. When a law is passed that they don’t like, they ignore it and work with their ideological supporters in the media to get the laws repealed.

It is about POWER. If it were only about money, we could buy them off, but there is no substitute for power, just as there is no substitute for freedom. This “Strategy” has nothing to do with controlling “drugs” and everything to do with controlling the mechanisms of state violence.

I have to go now. There’s a knock at the door.