Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Virginia Democrat Louise Lucas Charged with Racketeering and Money Laundering in Cannabis Corruption Case, Patel Blasts Her During Press Conference

Federal authorities have charged 82-year-old Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas with racketeering, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to distribute marijuana, and gun possession as part of an alleged public corruption scheme tied to a cannabis business that she co-owns.

Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate and one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, surrendered to authorities Thursday, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.

Authorities also charged and took into custody a half-dozen others in the alleged scheme.

Virginia journalist Brandon Scope wrote on X, “sources tell me that members of Sen. Louise Lucas’ family have already been arrested.”

The indictment alleges that members of the conspiracy used various business entities to disguise the proceeds of illegal marijuana distribution.

It further claims that Lucas “used her political position in the Virginia state senate to insulate” the enterprise “from criminal scrutiny, to further the goal of wealth accumulation.”

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Supreme Court agrees to review a Reconstruction-era ban on distilling spirits in private homes

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago.

Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers.

Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers.

Federal law makes home distilling a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Separate challenges to the law divided two federal circuit courts, which issued conflicting decisions in April, only 11 days apart.

A three-judge panel from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal ban in a case brought by John Ream, a brewpub owner from Newark, Ohio, who wants to distill whisky at home for his personal consumption.

A Fifth Circuit panel ruled in favor of different plaintiffs — members of the Texas-based Hobby Distillers Association — and concluded that statutory prohibitions on in-home distilling are outside the scope of Congress’ taxing power under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit decision, which was the Justice Department’s preference.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Alt said they are “thrilled” that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

“Our country’s founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime,” Alt said in a statement.

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“Ask Your Doctor:” The Media’s Most Dangerous Tagline

Travelling to the US never fails to put me in touch with a part of American culture that I find particularly fascinating, but disturbing. Drugs. Drugs and more Drugs. I’m talking about the in-your-face, 24/7, marketing of the newest, most expensive pharmaceuticals on the planet.

All in the name of health, of course. 

You might argue, but so what? Every other consumer product gets advertised in the US—almost everywhere, to everyone, perhaps except tobacco. And lots of those things are bad for you too, such as junk food, alcohol, and gambling. 

However, drugs are different, and I often find myself experiencing a kind of vertigo as I stare, enthralled, at all the incessant drug advertising from screens everywhere I look—in airports, hotel lounges, restaurants, or bars. 

The plotlines are predictable. A slick 60 seconds and we see the fate of worried people suffering some sort of condition “ask their doctor” about Drug X, and soon the new prescription is magically transforming their lives. They turn into bliss and smiles as they romp their way through meadows of wildflowers while, sotto voce, we catch strange murmurs of liver failure and premature death. 

I find myself absorbed in the ads as if they are cultural artifacts of a strange race. Most of the Americans I know seem to be pretty healthy people, but any newcomer confronting all the US screens for the first time might conclude one thing: “Man, these people must be really sick.” 

They are sick, but not in the way of being physically sick. Sick as in showing all the adverse effects of living in a polluted information ecosystem where toxic levels of drug propaganda drift through the airwaves as freely as exhaust engulfs a freeway. 

Americans are so immersed in the smog of commercially-sponsored drug information that they might forget they used to live in a world where serious criticisms of drug industry products or behaviour were routinely reported on mainstream TV. Those halcyon days are over. 

The Land of the Free means drugmakers can, with near impunity, push their expensive products for Crohn’s disease, Colitis, or psoriasis—serious obesity, schizophrenia, and major depression with the most outlandish of claims wrapped up in crafty but misleading narratives. Drugs get advertised, and the stuff between the ads (ie: the programming, the sitcoms, and the news) won’t touch the subject with a ten-foot pole lest they upset the money chain. Meanwhile, everyone thinks this is normal? Wow. 

Not everyone. Earlier this summer, the consumer group US Public Citizen put out a petition urging the FDA to ban Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. They listed the usual reasons why DTCA is so toxic to consumers: Emotional manipulation, misleading benefit and risk information, inappropriate prescribing and overdiagnosis, the erosion of the patient-physician relationship, the promotion of low-value medications, and overall economic harm. Amen to all that.

What it all adds up to is a polluted environment in which careful and appropriate pharmaceutical use doesn’t happen. Americans are paying the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world, yet also have the most profligate use of those drugs. 

The pollution of the airwaves by Pharma propaganda is precisely the reason every other country in the world (except tiny New Zealand) bans Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA). The rest of the civilized world looked at DTCA, recognized it as a predatory assault on public health, and banned it decades ago.

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More Military Assassinations in the Caribbean

The US military announced this week that it had killed four “narco-terrorists” by blowing up another boat in the Caribbean. This now brings the military death toll from these types of military boat killings to 235 people.

I have addressed these types of killings in the past, but as long as the US national-security establishment continues to engage in them, it is important to continue highlighting the evil nature of these killings.

There are several points that I wish to emphasize about these boat killings:

1. Simply because it is the military doing the killing does not mean that wartime rules apply. That’s because the military is operating in a police capacity by enforcing the US “war on drugs.” The drug “war” is not real war — that’s just a figure of speech. Ordinarily, it is the DEA or the local police who are enforcing America’s decades-old drug war. Here, the military is stepping into the shoes of the DEA by helping to enforce the federal government’s drug laws. That means that the same principles of criminal justice apply to the military as they do to the DEA. The fact that US officials claim to be “at war” against drug dealers is obviously just a ruse to enable them to ignore the Constitution.

2. The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution expressly prohibits federal officials from depriving people of life without due process of law, which necessarily means charging people with crimes and according them a trial. That’s obviously not what the military is doing with its killings of those people in boats on the high seas. No criminal indictment. No trial. No opportunity to contest the government’s evidence or accusation. Simply summary executions  based on the government’s unilateral determination that the occupants are drug traffickers.

3. Given the lack of due process of law, the military killings of these boat people operate as state-inflicted assassinations. One big advantage of using the military, rather than the DEA, to commit these assassinations is that military operations traditionally receive extraordinary judicial deference, especially when the executive branch invokes national security and armed conflict.

4. It is the height of hypocrisy to have the military enforcing criminal laws outside the United States, given that US law prohibits the military from enforcing criminal laws inside the United States. If it’s a bad idea for the military to be involved in law enforcement against Americans, then it’s a bad idea for the military to be involved in law enforcement against foreign citizens.

5. The killings amount to military cowardice, akin to a federal official shooting a criminal suspect in the back. Given the overwhelming power of the military, it could easily approach people in boats and demand that they surrender. Instead, the military chooses to kill them, knowing that for all practical purposes. the victims pose no danger whatsoever to the powerful military armada charged with killing them. After all, given that the Coast Guard’s policy is based on stopping boats, searching them, taking suspects into custody, and returning suspects to the U.S for trial, there is no good reason why the military can’t follow that same policy.

6. The omnipotent, non-reviewable military power to assassinate people in the enforcement of the federal government’s drug war arguably applies to everyone, including Americans. The fact that the US government is exercising its assassination power against drug-war suspects here in the United States as of now doesn’t mean that it can’t exercise such power in the future.

7. The fact that the military claims to have “intelligence” pointing toward criminal culpability of the victims is irrelevant from both a legal and a moral standpoint. Under America’s original criminal-justice principles, any such “intelligence” must be tested in a court of law, especially since it oftentimes proves to be faulty. Moreover, as most people know by now, federal officials have been known to make up or concoct evidence as a way to frame people who they are convinced are criminals. That’s one of the reasons we have trials in America’s criminal-justice system rather than have the DEA or the cops simply shoot and kill drug-war suspects.

8. These military drug-war killings are what we would expect from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, such as North Korea, Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia, not with a nation that professes adherence to due process of law.

9. The military’s boat killings reflect a deep denigration of the value of human life, especially for foreign citizens.

10. The drug-war killings constitute a grave violation of God’s sacred commandment against murder.

11. The military’s boat killings are no different in principle from what former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is being criminally prosecuted for by the International Criminal Court. He stands accused of ordering his officials to summarily kill drug war suspects without according them due process of law.

12. Regardless of how many people the US military kills in the enforcement of the federal government’s drug laws, the drug war will never be “won.” It will go on forever, with the national-security establishment and the rest of the federal government gaining ever-more destructive power over both Americans and foreigners — brutal police-state power that will continue to destroy people’s liberty and privacy.

13. No government, including the US government, wields the legitimate moral authority to punish anyone for possessing, ingesting, or distributing any drug whatsoever. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to possess, ingest, or distribute any drug they want.

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