Adam Dick

Reported efforts to begin following through on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 election promise to reduce marijuana arrests in the city has distressed Sergeants Benevolent Association police union President Ed Mullins. Mullins is quoted Wednesday in the New York Post lamenting that “If the current practice of making arrests for both possession and sale of marijuana is, in fact, abandoned, then this is clearly the beginning of the breakdown of a civilized society.”

The city’s apparent move to reduce the number of marijuana arrests comes soon after an October joint report of the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project publicized that the number of marijuana possession arrests in New York City were on track to remain the same under de Blasio’s leadership, or even increase, compared to arrests under Michael Bloomberg, the preceding mayor.

Of course, the truth is that there is nothing civilized about arresting people and throwing them in jail for making the choice to use, buy, or sell marijuana. Such choices have been tolerated or accepted in much of the world for centuries and were legal under United States law for the majority of the nation’s history. US legal prohibitions and punishments were imposed in the 20th century, including with the enactment of laws such as the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and marijuana’s inclusion in schedule one of Controlled Substances Act of 1970, thus applying the most expansive level of prohibition to actions involving the plant. In contrast, looking further back to the origins of the US, we find that Founding Fathers grew hemp on their farms, including George Washington at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

State and local governments continued going their own way on marijuana laws in elections Tuesday, with voters in the sates of Alaska and Oregon, along with United States capital city Washington, DC, approving ballot measures legalizing marijuana for recreational use. All three jurisdictions already had laws allowing medical marijuana use, while Alaska also already had legal recreational use but not legal sale of marijuana.

Also in the Tuesday elections, legalization of medical marijuana passed in the US territory of Guam and received a 58% majority vote in the state of Florida. The Florida ballot measure, however, did not pass because state law imposed a 60% supermajority vote requirement for victory.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

John Stossel, in a conversation Thursday with fellow Fox Business host Stuart Varney, demolished with three arguments the old saw that Libertarian Party candidates are “spoilers” for Republican candidates.

First, Stossel notes that, in the many races that are not close contests, trailing Libertarian candidates cannot affect who wins. Therefore, why not vote for who you like most?

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The US government has demonstrated with its No Fly and Selectee Lists, in operation for over a decade, how to deny respect for tens of thousands of individuals’ travel and privacy rights without even the slightest nod to due process protections. Over the last 19 months, the New York government has followed a similar course, using a new “No Guns List” to deny respect for tens of thousands of individuals’ right to keep and bear arms.

New York Times writer Anemona Hartocollis explains in a Sunday Times article that New York state’s 2013 gun control law the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act is facilitating the prohibition of gun ownership and possession for many New Yorkers by compelling physicians, psychologists, registered nurses, and licensed clinical social workers to report to the government the identities of any patients they think are “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.”

Hartcollis notes that the vast majority of people thus reported, due to the idiosyncratic determination of a medical worker, are then put on the state’s new ‘No Guns List.’ In just the 19 months since the implementation of this SAFE Act provision, nearly 35,000 individuals have thereby been added to the list.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The militarization of local police in the United States is not being fueled just by the federal government providing military equipment, including machine guns, grenade launchers, and armored vehicles, to local police departments. The police are also funding the rise of SWAT with billions of dollars obtained through asset seizures that amount to highway robbery under the guise of law enforcement.

In an October 11 Washington Post article, Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Steven Rich offer some revealing details concerning how state and local police have raised billions of dollars since 2008 via asset seizures associated with the US Department of Justice Equitable Sharing Program that allows state and local police departments to take 80 percent of the proceeds of seizures conducted in cooperation with US government agencies. In addition, much more police revenue has been gained through asset seizures outside the program and without direct US government involvement.

What do the state and local police do with the money obtained through asset forfeitures? As the Post article explains, much of it is pumped into expanding surveillance and police militarization:

The police purchases comprise a rich mix of the practical and the high-tech, including an array of gear that has helped some departments militarize their operations: Humvees, automatic weapons, gas grenades, night-vision scopes and sniper gear. Many departments acquired electronic surveillance equipment, including automated license-plate readers and systems that track cellphones.

Police departments even use the Equitable Sharing money to pay incidental costs related to military weapons and equipment obtained from the US government’s 1033 program:

Ten agencies have used the asset forfeiture funds to pay their fees for the Defense Department’s excess property initiative, better known as the 1033 program, which enables local and state police to buy surplus military-grade equipment at cut rates. The equipment includes automatic weapons, night-vision gear and clothing.

Police in Sahuarita, Ariz., paid $4,300 to outfit a Humvee obtained through the 1033 program. The New Bedford, Mass., Police Department in 2012 paid $2,119 for shipping costs for M-16s from the military.

In addition to the harmful uses to which the Equitable Sharing money is employed, O’Harrow and Rich point out the absolute injustice of the asset seizures that feed money into the US government program:

Of the nearly $2.5 billion in spending reported in the forms, 81 percent came from cash and property seizures in which no indictment was filed, according to an analysis by The Post. Owners must prove that their money or property was acquired legally in order to get it back.

You read that right. The way the asset seizures work is the police just take your money or other property even without the slightest basis for proving you committed a crime, much less that there is any relationship between an alleged illegal activity and the property taken. Then, turning on its head the fundamental American legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” victims of asset seizure must prove they had acquired without ties to illegal activity whatever was taken before they can have it back.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.