The Drug War's a Dead Letter without the Police State
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://c4ss.org/content/1472
The Drug War�s a Dead Letter Without the Police State
by Kevin Carson
Nov 29, 2009
Let�s do a little thought experiment.
Never mind, for the moment, the question of the Drug War�s moral
legitimacy. Never mind whether the government has the right to prevent
mentally sound grownups from deciding what substances to put in their
own bodies, or what substances to buy from and sell to others.
Let�s just consider, as a practical question, what effectively enforcing
the drug laws actually requires.
Imagine a government trying to enforce the drug laws, if the common law
�search and seizure� protections, found in the Fourth Amendment and
analogous provisions of the state constitutions, were enforced according
to the plain meaning of their language. That means the government
couldn�t use �no reasonable expectation of privacy� exceptions to
nullify the Fourth Amendment for the purposes of helicopter infrared
snooping or footborne trespassing on people�s land, traffic checkpoints,
and drug-sniffing dogs. There would be no more �no knock� warrants.
There would be no such thing as roving wiretaps or �Know Your Customer�
laws.
Imagine the government trying to enforce the drug laws, if it were held
to the plain meaning of the �due process� clause of the Fifth Amendment
and analogous state constitutional safeguards. Can you imagine the
consternation in police forces, if they had to file criminal charges and
secure a conviction from a jury before they could seize your property?
Imagine how hard it would be for government to enforce drug laws, if
courts automatically threw out evidence obtained from sting operations
and entrapment in which undercover police actively solicited violations
of the law.
Imagine how hard it would be to enforce drug laws, if the courts
automatically threw out all �evidence� obtained in a manner that
violated the alleged spirit of the law. No more evidence � or perjured
testimony � obtained by threatening jailhouse snitches or offering them
more lenient treatment. There would also be no guilty pleas based on
�plea bargain� blackmail enforced by the manufacture of as many
obviously spurious charges as possible; like �loser pays� rules in civil
suits, this practice has the effect of artificially skewing the
incentives so that the underdog has as much as possible to lose, and the
big guy has little or nothing to lose. Imagine, as well, the effect of
eliminating all the informal harassment and muscling cops do on their
turf on a daily basis, to intimidate people into cooperating with them.
Imagine the cumulative effect of all these changes on the Drug War. I
think it�s pretty obvious that without all the forms of lawlessness
described above, the Drug War would be a dead letter.
And all the things I�ve described should be utterly loathsome and
repugnant, to anyone who believes in principles like the due process
rights of the accused.
It follows that the Drug War would be a moot point, in a society where
the Bill of Rights actually served as a significant restraint on the
powers of police and prosecutors, and due process rights of the accused
had any real meaning.
Never mind whether the drug laws themselves are compatible with a free
society; without the enforcement tools of a virtually unlimited police
state, they are unenforceable.
You could have the substantive drug laws of Turkey or Singapore � death
penalty and all � and with common law due process and search and seizure
rights vigorously enforced, the drug laws would be toothless. The only
people ever busted for drug production, sales, possession or use would
be the most careless and stupid. Among those smart enough to take the
most basic precautions, the risk of getting caught would be
infinitesimal and the drug laws held in utter contempt. Every once in a
while, some TV show does a �stupid criminals� bit with a news snippet
about some brain-damaged hippie who leaves a sack of hash brownies on
the steps of the police station, and then responds to a helpful �Lost
and Found� ad placed by the cops on the local radio station.
The thing is, if cops were bound by the laws they claimed to enforce,
such Darwin Awards fodder would be the only people ever arrested.
If you want the Drug War, you must sacrifice the Bill of Rights and the
due process rights of the accused, and submit to a police state in which
you have no rights or protections whatsoever. There are no other
choices. It�s that simple.
This has broader implications. The market liberal notion of a written
constitution as law that the state allegedly must submit to is
ultimately just a temporary placeholder for the anarchist understanding
of law being able to be derived independently of the state. This creates
standards which the state ought to be held accountable to. Such
accountability would result in its abolition.
C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author
and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in
Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist
Anarchist Perspective, both of which are freely available online. Carson
has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs,
including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and
his own Mutualist Blog.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
All laws are good, to those who draw a salary for
their enforcement.
-- Clark Ashton Smith
VFW
Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> http://c4ss.org/content/1472
> The Drug War�s a Dead Letter Without the Police State
> by Kevin Carson
> Nov 29, 2009
>
> Let�s do a little thought experiment.
>
> Never mind, for the moment, the question of the Drug War�s moral
> legitimacy. Never mind whether the government has the right to prevent
> mentally sound grownups from deciding what substances to put in their
> own bodies, or what substances to buy from and sell to others.
>
> Let�s just consider, as a practical question, what effectively enforcing
> the drug laws actually requires.
>
> Imagine a government trying to enforce the drug laws, if the common law
> �search and seizure� protections, found in the Fourth Amendment and
> analogous provisions of the state constitutions, were enforced according
> to the plain meaning of their language. That means the government
> couldn�t use �no reasonable expectation of privacy� exceptions to
> nullify the Fourth Amendment for the purposes of helicopter infrared
> snooping or footborne trespassing on people�s land, traffic checkpoints,
> and drug-sniffing dogs. There would be no more �no knock� warrants.
> There would be no such thing as roving wiretaps or �Know Your Customer�
> laws.
>
> Imagine the government trying to enforce the drug laws, if it were held
> to the plain meaning of the �due process� clause of the Fifth Amendment
> and analogous state constitutional safeguards. Can you imagine the
> consternation in police forces, if they had to file criminal charges and
> secure a conviction from a jury before they could seize your property?
>
> Imagine how hard it would be for government to enforce drug laws, if
> courts automatically threw out evidence obtained from sting operations
> and entrapment in which undercover police actively solicited violations
> of the law.
>
> Imagine how hard it would be to enforce drug laws, if the courts
> automatically threw out all �evidence� obtained in a manner that
> violated the alleged spirit of the law. No more evidence � or perjured
> testimony � obtained by threatening jailhouse snitches or offering them
> more lenient treatment. There would also be no guilty pleas based on
> �plea bargain� blackmail enforced by the manufacture of as many
> obviously spurious charges as possible; like �loser pays� rules in civil
> suits, this practice has the effect of artificially skewing the
> incentives so that the underdog has as much as possible to lose, and the
> big guy has little or nothing to lose. Imagine, as well, the effect of
> eliminating all the informal harassment and muscling cops do on their
> turf on a daily basis, to intimidate people into cooperating with them.
>
> Imagine the cumulative effect of all these changes on the Drug War. I
> think it�s pretty obvious that without all the forms of lawlessness
> described above, the Drug War would be a dead letter.
>
> And all the things I�ve described should be utterly loathsome and
> repugnant, to anyone who believes in principles like the due process
> rights of the accused.
>
> It follows that the Drug War would be a moot point, in a society where
> the Bill of Rights actually served as a significant restraint on the
> powers of police and prosecutors, and due process rights of the accused
> had any real meaning.
>
> Never mind whether the drug laws themselves are compatible with a free
> society; without the enforcement tools of a virtually unlimited police
> state, they are unenforceable.
>
> You could have the substantive drug laws of Turkey or Singapore � death
> penalty and all � and with common law due process and search and seizure
> rights vigorously enforced, the drug laws would be toothless. The only
> people ever busted for drug production, sales, possession or use would
> be the most careless and stupid. Among those smart enough to take the
> most basic precautions, the risk of getting caught would be
> infinitesimal and the drug laws held in utter contempt. Every once in a
> while, some TV show does a �stupid criminals� bit with a news snippet
> about some brain-damaged hippie who leaves a sack of hash brownies on
> the steps of the police station, and then responds to a helpful �Lost
> and Found� ad placed by the cops on the local radio station.
>
> The thing is, if cops were bound by the laws they claimed to enforce,
> such Darwin Awards fodder would be the only people ever arrested.
>
> If you want the Drug War, you must sacrifice the Bill of Rights and the
> due process rights of the accused, and submit to a police state in which
> you have no rights or protections whatsoever. There are no other
> choices. It�s that simple.
>
> This has broader implications. The market liberal notion of a written
> constitution as law that the state allegedly must submit to is
> ultimately just a temporary placeholder for the anarchist understanding
> of law being able to be derived independently of the state. This creates
> standards which the state ought to be held accountable to. Such
> accountability would result in its abolition.
>
> C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author
> and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in
> Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist
> Anarchist Perspective, both of which are freely available online. Carson
> has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs,
> including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and
> his own Mutualist Blog.
>
> --
> Dan Clore
>
> My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
> (Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
> Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
> http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> All laws are good, to those who draw a salary for
> their enforcement.
> -- Clark Ashton Smith
thanks, I'll share it.
--
money; what a concept!
TCBEvolver
of them will never have had these thoughts placed before them.
Tom Buckner
BS
Dan Clore
> On Dec 1, 4:12 pm, TCBEvolver <tomcbuck...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dan, this is excellent. I will spread it to my Facebook circle.
>> Most of them will never have had these thoughts placed before them.
And here I've stuck with MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/clorebeast )
while everyone COOL has gotten on Facebook instead--
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"