Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

There is a budget crunch in state government so every agency is looking to save its budget.  The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is no exception.  Director Darrell Weaver has just announced a “spike” in drug deaths in Oklahoma.  He calls it a crisis.

There were 577 who died of drugs in 2009.  Hydrocodone (Lortab) led the list as cause of 130 deaths, an increase of 17 deaths from the year before.  Oxycodone followed wit 117, then methadone, which lead the list in 2002, caused 84 deaths in 2009, but it was down from 110 deaths in 2008.  Cocaine caused 37 deaths, a decrease of 13 from the year before.

The use of different usage drugs and deaths caused by drugs will vary and certainly the use of drugs has been increasing in the last several years.  But why does that justify a separate agency to enforce the drug laws?    Every police officer, every deputy sheriff, every highway patrol trooper and town marshal and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent is enforcing the drug laws every day.   If that isn’t enough, there are many federal law enforcement officers in the state of Oklahoma, including the F.B.I., who enforce the federal drug laws, which mirror state drug laws.  So why does Oklahoma need a separate agency with a separate budget, separate buildings and salaried employees and pensions dedicated to enforcing the drug laws?  Of course such an agency is always pushing the emergency alarm, calling for higher penalties and more money for their agency.

The drug war is similar to the military war fought by our national defense.  There is always a fear of invasion just as there is a fear of drug crazies running around the country.  There is always to announce a “crisis.”  The fears are real because the dangers are real, but the manipulation of this fear and threat is a very old bureaucratic trait.  There is no such thing as enough tax-payer money going to feed that will feed either the defense department or the drug agencies.  They have become empires unto themselves, and anyone who has any pause in giving them everything they ask for is tarred as unpatriotic.

Notwithstanding there is a real danger from the misuse of drugs, that danger need not necessarily be attacked like a military target.  If it is, that approach may remind observers more of the quagmire in Vietnam more than World War II: always more money needed, always more troops needed, but always more explanations and alibis instead of success.  Victory is just barely out of reach- always.  Just give us another 12% increase of funding and we’ll lick this thing for good.

Part of the problem is that the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is almost oriented almost exclusively for punitive action, for “law enforcement.”  This has not proved to reduce the use of drugs any more than the American military had the prospect of outlasting Ho Chi Minh.  Drug education and prevention is given only superficial investment even though some different approach, like education and some new looks at prevention will be needed if we are going to seen anything different in the next decades.

Why don’t all the millions of dollars of cash money that flows to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs every year from forfeitures go to drug prevention instead of more automatic weapons, bullet-proof vests, bullets, and black SUVs instead of to teaching children the perils of using drugs without threatening them?  At least going through the motions keeps the empire in business.

To the horror of the “zero-tolerance-for-drug” people, the Republic of Mexico has decided to be lenient with those caught with small amounts of drugs.  The new laws allow up to about four joints of marijuana for personal use and about one-half gram of cocaine, which translates into about four “lines” of cocaine or half the weight of a paperclip.  The limits for heroin and methamphetamine are about half the size of a pencil eraser, for LSD about enough to make a few grains of salt.

Oklahomans must even show identification to purchase some cold medications at a pharmacy because those medications contain ingredients used to manufacture methamphetamine.  Previously such cold medicines were purchasable over the counter.  No more.  And some credit this tightened policy with a significant drop in the number of meth labs making methamphetamine in Oklahoma.

“That’s just a reckless policy to have,” said Mark Woodward spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics about the new Mexican policy.  It takes away a huge deterrent away from someone using drugs.”  No surprise that this agency is completely against backing up one inch in the “War on Drugs.”

Are we winning the “War on Drugs?”  Most criminal defense lawyers in Oklahoma would be skeptical.  I guess the argument to continue the “War on Drugs” is that the drug situation would be even worse if we ever let up, if we ever stop prosecuting to the maximum against any use of any drugs at any time in any place no matter what.  That is one reason the United States allows those in serious, genuine pain to suffer so much, unlike European governments, because “drugs” are medically indicated to address pain and “drugs” are seen in the United States as inherently evil and criminally tainted, something to prosecute rather than to use as a medical tool to alleviate suffering.

The new Mexican laws do not make it strictly legal to possess the enumerated small quantities of drugs, but such users arrested face drug treatment instead of jail, so long as no violence is involved.

About 90-95 per cent of the illegal drugs entering the United States come across the Mexican border.  That is why drug enforcers in the United States worry about the more permissive law in Mexico.  “I think it’s going to increase the work of our customs agents,” Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said.  Law enforcement commonly develop a prosecution for large amounts of drug distribution or trafficking from witnesses prosecuted for possession of small quantities.  Without the arrests for smaller amounts, the thinking goes, the potential for larger prosecutions diminishes.  Whether those arrested for the smaller quantities possess the smaller amounts for personal use or not, law enforcement will lose the leverage over them to reach up the distribution ladder without the threat of jail on the smaller fish.

The new law allowing possession of smaller amounts in Mexico is intended to concentrate on catching and prosecuting the big dealers rather than the smaller possessors of drugs.  Mexican President Felipe Calderon reportedly hopes the new law will help with the increasing drug addiction in Mexico.

Mexico has seen a doubling in drug addiction in six years to 307,000, according to a Mexican government study.  Meanwhile drug use in the United States has remained fairly constant at around 10 million from 2002 to 2007, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.   The number of Mexicans who have tried drugs, which is not the same as “drug use” and certainly not “drug addiction”, rose to 4.5 million.  Mexico has a population roughly one-third that of the United States.