Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

SAN FRANCISCO PANEL EXAMINES DRUGS, TERROR AND YOUR RIGHTS

George Orwell crafted many people's mental model of a police state: An
iron fist ever ready to pound on the door, spies everywhere,
resistance nearly futile. A different picture of a government gone
amok emerged at a January 21 San Francisco panel cosponsored by Drug
Policy Alliance (http://www.drugpolicy.org) titled "Got Rights? Drugs,
Security and the Future of Freedom in America." Four featured speakers
described an emerging world closer to Aldous Huxley's dystopian vision
than Orwell's: the steady, often invisible erosion of legal rights and
freedoms, the broadly growing power of law enforcement with technology
in a key role, and many people genuinely cowed by their fears or
enthusiastic about the purported trade-off of freedom for security.

The speakers focused on different aspects of a post-9-11 America where
the Bush administration has succeeded, to a dispiriting degree, in
linking drugs -- never prohibition -- with terrorism.

The political, legal and emotional landscape the speakers described
was complex and often bleak. They tempered this perspective with
reminders of victories, recent and past, and with descriptions of
urgent opportunities ahead in the ongoing battle to preserve democracy.

Dorothy M. Ehrlich, who heads the northern California chapter of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), believes America is becoming a
"surveillance society" in which "we are putting the laws in place, the
technology is getting more sophisticated, and we have racial and
ethnic targets." The result is an increasingly blurry line between
criminal investigations and efforts to thwart terrorism.

Contributing to this blur are the PATRIOT Act and a series of
executive orders that are the legal framework for outrages such as
"sneak and peek," shorthand for the right of law enforcement people to
rummage through a person's house and belongings without telling that
person.

Ehrlich reminded the audience that the government's zeal for
aggressive spying is not new; one example is the massive smear
campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr. by the FBI from 1963 to 1968.
The ACLU chapter in southern California recently launched a campaign
to promote its proposed Safety and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act of 2003.
The proposal, if made law, would impose curbs on "sneak and peek" and
would reduce government access to many forms of personal data, such as
bank records, Internet activity, bookstore purchases and library paper
trails, that the PATRIOT Act permits.

In his State of the Union speech the night before the conference,
President Bush had claimed solid accomplishment on the drug front and
had announced his request for "an additional $23 million dollars for
schools that want to use drug testing as a tool to save children's
lives." Such drug testing is one way to socialize young people to
relinquish their rights, said one panelist.

"Why are these people on a crusade about testing in our schools?"
asked Judith K. Appel, DPA Deputy Director of Legal Affairs. One
reason, she believes, is pragmatism. "They think it sells, and it does
divert attention from the big-ticket spending in the drug war, such as
in Colombia," she said. Beyond that, drug warriors like the
socializing effect of early drug testing. "The war on drugs softens
young people up for not having their rights later on," Appel said. She
also cited drug testing in schools as an example of policy driven by
profit and ignoring science.

One of the benchmark measures of teen drug use, the Monitoring the
Future surveys, which sampled 76,000 students nationwide in 8th, 10th
and 12th grades, found no difference in the rate of drug use between
schools that test and those that don't.

Gerald Uelmen, who teaches at Santa Clara University Law School,
reported on the legal battle for medical marijuana. "Thank God for the
Ninth Circuit," said Uelmen, referring to the Federal District Court
that has delivered several key victories for patients and providers.

Here Uelmen cited Conant vs. Walters, in which the court upheld a
doctor's right to discuss all available treatments with his or her
patients, and Raich vs. Ashcroft, which shielded two cannabis growers,
who were clearly uninvolved in interstate commerce, from prosecution
under the laws governing such commerce. "On the national level, the
best way to protect our liberties would be to change the composition
of the US Supreme Court," Uelmen said. "We need a Court that takes the
Constitution seriously.

The Fourth Amendment has barely survived the drug war, and it may not
survive the war on terrorism."

For John Gilmore, computer entrepreneur and civil libertarian, the
issue boils down to the "right to be anonymous." Gilmore, who said he
doesn't carry a driver's license or other form of personal
identification, recounted several cases of people who refused to show
ID to the police and suffered for it. Gilmore joined this group when
he was denied passage on airplanes at Oakland (California) and San
Francisco airports last July 4th (http://freetotravel.org). As he
deplored the "pervasive encroachment of the right to move around, and
the right to be an ordinary person doing ordinary things," Gilmore
noted that "there are other countries where things seem to be getting
better and that seem more civilized than the US."

There are what look like greener pastures elsewhere, but those are not
an option for the vast majority of US-based reformers, who have plenty
to occupy them here at home. A recent example came on December 13, the
day the world saw the first images of a just-captured Saddam Hussein.
That day President Bush signed the Intelligence Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2004. The new law, wrote Kim Zetter of Wired News, gives
the FBI expanded powers to obtain records from financial institutions
without needing a judge's permission. The law also broadens the
definition of a financial institution to include travel agencies, real
estate agents, jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships.

It's hard to imagine an administration more hostile to drug reform
than the Bush gang, and several people in the audience expressed
support for regime change at home. Gilmore cautioned that "none of the
Democratic candidates are speaking out about these horrible laws and
policies." Indeed, with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich's
campaign, the Democratic candidates' offerings on drug policy seem
grudging and unwilling to challenge the assumptions of the drug war.
As the panel members expressed, and as almost-daily events make clear,
the battle to preserve democracy will be long, difficult and uncertain.