Another Tulia in East Texas?

Newsbrief: Another Tulia in East Texas?
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/361/another.shtml

A mid-October drug bust that netted 72 alleged crack cocaine dealers -- all black -- in the East Texas town of Palestine (pop. 17,000) is raising eyebrows at at least one widely-respected Texas publication. In a web-only special report, the Texas Observer is questioning whether modestly-sized Palestine really supported 72 crack dealers, why all those arrested where black, the nature of the state's ubiquitous drug task forces, and whether the state has another Tulia on its hands (http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle_new.asp?ArticleID=3).

As the magazine noted, "residents of Palestine must have been surprised to learn that their small town apparently had more crack dealers than restaurants." But in two days of arrests beginning October 13, teams from the Anderson County Sheriff's Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the US Marshall's Service, and the DEA arrested a total of 72 people on various state and federal drug dealing charges. While the Observer found, unsurprisingly, that there were a handful of dealers in town, it also found that most suspects were charged with a single count of delivering crack to a confidential informant. None of those deliveries involved more than four grams, with some involving less than a gram. As the Observer noted, "Many of the suspects appear to be poor crack addicts swept up in the drug sting. Charged as dealers, they now face sentences of 20 years to life in state prison."

In "The Usual Suspects," the Observer wrote: "Yet again, a regional drug task force targeted an African-American population in a small Texas town, charging apparent crack addicts as dealers. All of this brings to mind the now-infamous Panhandle town that has become synonymous with all that's wrong with the war on drugs -- Tulia."

While the feds gobbled up the best cases, Anderson County prosecutors charged 56 people with distribution of crack. But in a numerical analysis of crack use patterns in rural areas, the Observer found that probably only about 70 people residing in Palestine smoke crack. The Observer strongly suggests that the vast majority of those arrested were no more than crack smokers. But prosecutors are determined to send them to prison for decades.

The story will continue. "The number of suspects charged as dealers in Anderson County has attracted the attention of the ACLU, which has uncovered task force wrongdoing all over the state and is investigating the Palestine bust," the Observer concluded. "Meanwhile, prosecutors and the Dogwood Trails task force will soon get the chance to prove that Palestine was so awash in crack that all 72 defendants really were legitimate dealers. The first trials are scheduled to begin in early December."

 

It bears repeating that if the charges are true, then Palestine had more crack dealers than restaurants. It is also interesting that every single one of the people arrested were black and each and every one was arrested for dealing.

 

I realize you won't accept it, but treatment is very effective in all but the hardest cases. Recovery rates approaching 70% have been noted for some programs, and that is without ANY outside funding and with a system that is corrupt and not set up to actually address the problems. The tax dollars to jail Caminetti would have been as absolutely wasted as the tax dollars for jailing any drug "offender" whose only crime is their choice of intoxicants.

An EXTREMELY small percentage of drug users commit crimes outside of using drugs that some politician says are bad. Virtually none of them have any negative impact on society whatsoever and as such, jailing them because they prefer pot or MDMA or even crack to alcohol is a HUGE waste of resources that could otherwise be used to help people who actually have a problem when it comes to drugs.

That is what I am doing here, fighting the law. The plain facts are that there is NO way that Palestine could have supported 70 drug dealers, which means that most of these people had charges trumped up against them and are now in all likelihood going to jail for quite some time simply because they are black and chose an unpopular intoxicant.

The difference, of course, is that they were allowed to make their case in the first place. Prohibitionists don't even allow the debate to happen because they know that in a fair debate, they will lose. My example is Thom Marshall, a columnist for the Chronicle who for weeks put up a challenge for anyone to come debate him in a public forum. He had a public official answer and offer to debate him, an offer that was apparently rescinded when the person's supervisor put the kibosh on it.

Prohibition is based on lies and it is perpetuated with lies. Officials will not allow a debate to happen because there is too much money in prohibition.

If you truly think that drug users should be separated from society, then you have absolutely no understanding of this issue.

We can get our kids off of drugs, but it will be impossible as long as prohibition rules.

 

As a result of the US pushing prohibition on the world, there is nowhere in the entire world where coca derivatives or poppy derivatives can be safely used. This statement is like a white racist in the '50s saying "if the n****** don't like it, they can move back to Africa."

If you choose to engage in meaningful debate, then I will respond, but you have chosen the "it's against the law, PERIOD" defense and have chosen to deflect attention from the main issue, which is a debate regarding the long term efficacy of prohibition as a policy. When you choose to debate that question, I will be happy to respond, but until then, you deserve nothing but a .

 

Newsbrief: South Carolina Jury Refuses to Send Opium Smoker to Prison for Decades, Acquits Him of Trafficking Instead
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/361/opium.shtml

A South Carolina prosecutor was ready to send a Laotian opium smoker to prison for 25 years as a drug trafficker, but that was too much for jurors to swallow. Instead, they found him not guilty and sent him home to his family, the York Herald reported last Friday.

Yer Vang had survived slave labor camps and being hunted by Southeast Asian communists, but he nearly fell prey to a prosecutor long on vindictiveness and short on proportionality. Vang, a 44-year-old Hmong refugee, was arrested as he smoked opium in his living room after police came to the house in October 2003 looking for his son, who was suspected of selling Ecstasy. Police arrested Vang and seized nearly a pound of opium.

Although Vang freely admitted being an opium addict and there was no evidence he had ever sold any of his stash, York County prosecutor E.B. Springs charged him with drug trafficking based on the weight of the seized opium. "It doesn't matter that he's an addict," Springs told the court. "Most crack dealers are addicts."

Springs conceded there was no evidence Vang was an opium dealer, but told jurors he did not have to prove the Vang actually sold any opium because South Carolina law allowed a trafficking charge based on weight alone. But after defense counsel Chris Wellborn described Vang's life story to the jurors, they grew queasy at the notion of imprisoning him for decades. Vang was drafted into the Laotian military as a teenager, imprisoned for two years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, acquired his opium habit after a grueling trek back to Laos in 1975, then escaped to Thailand in 1978 and eventually made his way to the US, where he joined an estimated 300,000 Hmong refugees.

As it deliberated, the jury sent a note to the judge asking whether it had to obey the spirit of the law or the letter of the law. But without waiting for the judge's response, a few minutes later the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and the construction worker returned home to his wife and 11 children.

Prosecutor Springs had turned down a Vang offer to plead guilty to simple possession, instead offering to send him to prison for only nine years if he copped a plea to the trafficking charge. Now, Springs ends up with nothing, and he still doesn't get it. "The victim here is the community," Springs said. "They felt sorrier for the defendant than they did for the community. He admitted he had the drugs," Springs said. "The law says you can't possess the drugs."

"This is a victory for common sense and what's just," said Vang's attorney, Chris Wellborn. "I don't see that it benefits the people of South Carolina or this community to put an addict in jail for 25 years." Neither, apparently, did the jury, despite Springs' fulminations.



And here is an example of a jury doing the RIGHT thing instead of sending a smoker to jail for decades based on evidence not present. If we had more juries like these (much like we had during alcohol prohibition), the drug war would simply fall apart since it is not justified. During alcohol prohibition, literally hundreds of juries used a concept known as "jury nullification" to express their diaffection with prohibition as a policy. We would be well served to consider this as a response to the new prohibition, which is just as useless and FAR more expensive than alcohol prohibition was.

 

You're probably right. However, when I start these threads, I do it with the assumption that we are debating the efficacy of the drug war in general. I suppose I should have stated that.

I still don't think that what happened in this case was justified based on the evidence present and further believe that the "do the crime, do the time" mantra is WAY overused, particularly since the "crime" does not in any way justify the time that must be served.

Very well said.

I would agree with you if there was anything even close to equal application of the drug laws. African-Americans make up 13% of drug users and yet comprise 55% of the population jailed for drug "offenses." In this case specifically, every single one of the "offenders" was black and there is no way that you can convince me that every single crack user, much less dealer, in Palestine is black. If that isn't skewed enforcement, then I don't know what is.

Jail time has not been shown to affect drug use in the least. Since we have begun jailing users, drug use rates have climbed, drug purity has increased, and prices have dropped. This seems to indicate that jail time doesn't affect usage rates in the least.

Other evidence comes from Holland, where they don't jail drug users AT ALL (only dealers) and have rates of use of drugs other than mar1juana very comparable to our rates of use in the US (adult use of mar1juana is comparable, but use of mar1juana by teens is about half of what we see here).

The people busted in this action were not trying to get the law changed, they were feeding their addiction, a disease that it is possible to recover from if one works at it and has support. Jailing users increases their criminality, increases the chances that they will use drugs, and reduces the chances to recover from said disease.

Personally, I don't disregard the laws, I am working to get the laws changed because I believe it is right. If this was about my ability to use drugs, I would have taken a job in Amsterdam when it was offered or I would have moved to Alaska when their Supreme Court struck down their mar1juana laws.

Nobody deserves to be jailed for drug "offenses."

The big difference is that the people in charge won't even allow such a debate to take place. It cannot be brought up as a topic of conversation and the officials in charge actively avoid any forum where their assertions can be challenged. They do this because in a fair, reasoned debate, they lose and they know it.

I agree that it was a mistake to shut rvolkin down like that. I apologize for my gaffe.