Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  Keep in mind that the obtaining of additional information will sometimes show a presumed fact to be fiction; additional evidence might well establish innocence.

  If you are reentering the country from abroad and the stub of a marijuana joint is found in your coat pocket, the immigration authorities can seize your passport. If I, as a person with sufficient authority, discover that you have a $23,000 savings account in the local Wells Fargo Bank, and I think the money came from drug transactions, I can and will seize this money. I no longer have to file a criminal charge or even a criminal complaint, and I certainly don't have to wait until you are convicted of an unlawful act in a court of law. I merely have to state that, in my opinion, there is a preponderance of evidence that you have been naughty.

  The frightening extension of this is that someone who feels that you are doing things he doesn't approve of, can effectively take from you your ability to travel abroad, or can seize the assets that might have allowed you to establish your innocence with the help of good legal counsel, if and when charges against you are finally brought.

  Very recently, the courts have decided that, after a conviction of a drug-related crime (using the "beyond reasonable doubt" criterion), the sentencing phase - which must follow the sentencing guideline standards - can be made more severe with the presentation of additional facts that need only meet the "preponderance of evidence" requirement.

  As an example of how these distinctions can be blurred, consider a person who was arrested with a given quantity of ephedrine in his bedroom (ephedrine is a listed precursor to methamphetamine, but not illegal to possess). He might be charged with the intent to manufacture the drug, based on the possession of a precursor, andthese days he will probably be found guilty. But, in the invocation of the sentencing guidelines, the quantity of the (legal) precursor that was under the bed can be used for determining the severity of his sentence.

  Next, consider the fact that, in this country, there has been a longstanding prohibition of any involvement of the military forces in civil law enforcement (the Posse Comitatus statute) unless specifically authorized by the Constitution or by Congress. This, too. Congress changed with the 1981 passage of the Department of Defense Authorization Act. This specified in detail the nature of assistance and support that the military will now provide civilian law enforcement personnel involved in the war against illegal drugs.

  In 1982 the military provided its initial help in the President's Task Force, in South Florida, with aviation and radar surveillance, and logistic and vessel support. From then on up to the present, with the phasing out of communism as a military target, the drug war has received continuously increasing military attention, as an acceptable justification for continued funding by Congress. The Pentagon has now been given the lead responsibility to serve as the intelligence and communications hub linking the anti-drug efforts of all U.S. agencies. This does not sit well with competing agencies such as the DEA, FBI and CIA, each of which has its own intelligence structure. Recent military involvement with the local government police against the well armed guerrilla groups in central Peru may be laying the foundation for an actual shooting war. And recently, the National Guard was directed to make their personnel available as customs inspectors, to swell the manpower at ports of entry.

  The IPS, too, got into the act in 1982. Tax information is now available to law-enforcement agencies, on request, to facilitate their prosecution of drug-related criminal cases.

  Now, consider the term, "a reasonable suspicion." This is a still more nebulous measure of guilt. Yet it is one that has been used in the drug area with appalling effectiveness. A Coast Guard boat has always been able to come up to your sailing boat to look for a violation of safety rules, but now the skipper of the Coast Guard vessel can, by simply stating that something looks odd to him and he has a reasonable suspicion that there might be drugs aboard, search your boat for drugs. What if they find nothing? They may still seize your boat, secure it for hours or days, remove chunks of it as they choose, until they either succeed in discovering something illegal, or give up in their search.

  All that is needed is a reasonable suspicion.

  Let us turn our attention to the phrase, "in good faith." We are getting further yet from hard evidence, and much closer to an undocumentable whim. Here anything goes, because to prove that a man (or woman) of authority acted in bad faith you must show that he or she acted recklessly, or lied. And that is pretty heavy duty proving. "I smelled methyl amine, and this has always meant to me a methamphetamine lab, and I got a warrant based on this statement. So it turned out to be an LSD lab and there was no methyl amine present. That's okay, since I acted in good faith." The warrant stands.

  "My cannabis-trained dog told me,'there is pot in there.' It turned out that there were psilocybin-containing mushrooms, yes, but no marijuana. That's all right, because I acted in good faith, on the basis of my dog's response." The warrant stands.

  An extension of this is the use of profiles, and the stopping and searching of people who are judged - again in good faith - to meet the composite picture of a person who is involved in drugs. The exact make-up of a profile is kept secret by the authorities, but in airports it involves such factors as the color of the skin, being in a hurry, having bought a one-way ticket, and having bought it with cash. If the profile is that of a courier, he can be detained, questioned, and searched as intimately as is wanted by the person in authority. If the profile is one of a swallower (one who swallows pouches of drug, to be recovered later) he can also be X-rayed without his consent and, if desired, held until the body contents are expelled naturally.

  On the highways, the profile includes not only the driver's appearance, but the quality and make of his car and, believe it or not, the extent of his adherence to the local speed limits (so as not to attract attention). "He had a Florida license plate, and an expensive-looking car, and was traveling at exactly the speed limit. In my opinion, he fit the profile of a drug courier. I pulled him over and found almost $5000 dollars in cash in his glove compartment. This money showed a detectable presence of cocaine. I seized the money, but I did not charge him with any crime."

  The seizure stands, because it was done in good faith, and it can be argued that cocaine on the money suggested that some drug-related criminal act had been committed.

  However, government forensic chemists have demonstrated that randomly selected samples of paper money in the United States are presently contaminated with a detectable quantity of cocaine. We have instruments now that are so sensitive, they can potentially document a trace of cocaine on any piece of paper money of any denomination, in anyone's wallet.

  Even though the Supreme Court last year endorsed the use of profiles with airline passengers, I still feel that this form of interception and interrogation can too easily be abused by the authorities, and it is neither needed nor should it be wanted in this country.

  Yet further down this graded scale of decreasing quality of proof of guilt, there is a level where no guilt need even be implied by a person in authority against an individual. This is a rapidly expanding area of drug-related police-state activity that simply denies the person any presumption of innocence, and as he is no longer presumed to be innocent he is, by default, guilty. It rests with the accused to prove that he is not committing a felony. I am speaking of the random urine test.

  What follows is a pretty harsh statement, but I mean it with total sincerity, from my heart: There is no justification, at any time, at any place, in my country, for a urine test to be made on any individual, unless there is a reason stated for supposing that there has been a crime committed.

  Let me state that again, in different words. To demand that a person pee in a cup whenever you wish him to, without a documented reason to suspect that he has been using an illegal drug, is intolerable in our republic. You are saying to him, "I wonder if you are not behaving in a way that I approve of. Convince me that you indeed are."

  Outrageous.

>   Intolerable.

  I don't care if the man is the pilot of Air Force One with the President on board, or the trigger man on a nuclear submarine with 24 Trident II D-5 missiles at his disposal; it is unthinkable that there could ever be a urine test demanded of a person, unless there were reason to suspect him of being impaired. Yes, it is possible that we might lose a plane here, or a skirmish there, but such would be a minor price for us to pay for having a nation that respects the privacy of the individual and the presumption of his innocence.

  The pilot/trigger man could be in a bad state of mind for many reasons (argument with a lover, burnt toast for breakfast), so our efforts must be directed to an evaluation of his behavior, his capabilities, and the intactness of his skills; there can be testing of his reflexes and coordination, in order to give evidence of impairment. If he is not considered completely competent to do his job, then - and only then - can a search into his urine be justified.

  In any case, a blind search for drugs in a pilot's urine can provide only miniscule protection against aberrant behavior, since he will fly his plane today, and the urine test results won't be available until next week. There is no protection provided under these conditions.

  I believe that a major reason for the wide promotion of urine testing is that, as a new, rapidly growing industry, it is an extraordinary moneymaker.

  There are other actions of the authorities that illustrate this "assume them guilty and let them prove otherwise" attitude. Last year the DEA contacted all the advertisers in the counter-culture magazine High Times who were offering hydroponic horticultural supplies for sale. Their customer lists were confiscated, and all those who had made purchases of any kind were visited by representatives of the DEA, on the assumption that they were growing marijuana.

  After a number of innocent orchid growers had been raided, the authorities' enthusiasm died down. But the heavy-handedness of this undertaking does present a frightening picture of our law enforcement authorities in action.

  As a way of exacting revenge at the legislative level, and also proving to the electorate that each and every Congressman is doing everything necessary to win the war on drugs, there is a continuous demand for increasingly harsh penalties associated with drug-related convictions.

  There have now been established inflexible prison terms and fine schedules that must be invoked for doing such-and-such with specifically designated quantities of certain illegal drugs.

  Your minimum time in prison is predicated on how much drug is involved, whether you have some special skills, whether you have been arrested before, and whether there was a gun involved. Here is a very important thing to remember. If there is any detectable amount of an illegal drug present in a seized mess, the entire weight of the mess will be considered as being the weight of the drug. If you are a boat captain, or a lawyer, or have some advanced education, you have a special skill, and you can be given an increased penalty. You might have a gun in a drawer in your bedroom at home, nowhere near the scene of the alleged crime.

  These particulars can all contribute to an increased and inflexible minimum sentence in prison, with times ranging from months to years to life, and with penalties climbing up there into the millions of dollars.

  If you are a major drug dealer (whatever that means), under certain of the above circumstances, several laws that are now being proposed can demand that you receive a death sentence. A recently proposed law, just passed by the Senate, says that all you have to do is deal in such-and-such a quantity of a given drug, and that quantity alone will qualify you as a "major" dealer. And if you are found guilty, you will be executed. Capital punishment as a mandatory price to pay for possession of more than XYZ grams of dope. Where in the world, but here in the United States, and in Iran, and maybe in Malaysia? The unauthorized possession of an atomic bomb, by the way, is worth a maximum of 12 years. I am confident that this bill presently being prepared for introduction into Congress (by Senator Gramm and Representative Gingrich) will never be signed into law, but the very fact that it is being seriously proposed is chilling. It introduces a whole new generation of penalties related to drug offenses (in addition to the mandatory execution of a person possessing more than an arbitrarily specified amount). These penalties include the denial of early release from prison until at least five years has been served;

  it demands that the state be required to conduct urine tests on anyone arrested, jailed, released or paroled (as a condition of the state continuing to receive Federal funds); it mandates that anyone convicted of use or possession of a drug will have to pay the cost of his trial and will also be fined 10% of his annual income; it says that there will be explicit permission given to states, counties, cities, school systems and private entities to engage in periodic and random drug testing.

  A much more subtle and insidious form of freedom loss can be seen in our schools. There is d.e facto censorship being implemented within the colleges and universities by the Government, in the way it funds research and thus controls its direction. There is an outright propaganda campaign being presented through the informational media, and there is no challenge being brought by those who know the facts and should be insisting on adherence to truth. Let me touch on these one at a time, as each of them is directed at a different population target.

  In the public schools, the efforts are being directed at the student. The message is, "Just Say No." There is no effort to inform, to educate, to provide the complex body of information that will allow the exercise of judgment. Rather, there is given the simple message that drugs kill.

  This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, and the egg is suddenly fried. Your sweet, virginal daughter was killed because she didn't learn about drugs. She should have learned to, "Just Say No." None of this can be called education. It is an effort to influence behavior patterns by repeating the same message over and over again. It is propaganda.

  All kinds of drugs are deeply, permanently, infused into our culture, into our way of life. Their values and their risks must be taught to our children, and this teaching must be done with honesty and integrity.

  And what is the status of research in the medical schools, and the universities, and the industrial laboratories across the nation? I can assure you that since psychedelic drugs are not officially acknowledged as a valid area for human research, there is no money being made available in any university or medical school for the exploration and study of their actions and effects in humans.

  It is a fact of life that all research today, at the academic level, is supported almost exclusively by federal funds, and if a grant application does not meet the wishes or needs of the granting agency, the research will remain unfunded, thus it will not be done. In the controls which have been put into place over the pharmaceutical industries, there is another effective mechanism of prohibition of inquiry. Research on drugs can only be approved for eventual medical use if the drugs involved have accepted medical utility. And there is an official statement that there are no drugs, not one single drug, in the fascinating area of the psychedelics, that has an accepted medical use. They are all, you understand. Schedule I things, and - by definition -

  neither they, nor any of their analogues, have any medical utility.

  As for the messages being pushed in the media? All too often, a lurid story is presented, and a later retraction is ignored. A couple of examples can illustrate this.

  Consider the phrases/ "Even the first time can kill," and "Even pure material can kill," as applied to cocaine use. Both were promoted as statements of fact, as an outgrowth of the tragic death of a sports figure named Mr. Len Bias, who died from an overdose of cocaine. This happened at a critical time, just weeks before the biannual drug bill was to be voted on.

  According to the newspapers, the autopsy report stated that the young man was a first time user, and that he had used pure cocaine. This is patent nonsense. Neither the purity of a drug, nor the frequency of its use in the past, can be gle
aned from an analysis of the body's tissues after death. When the final autopsy report was released, it was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it seemed apparent to the scientists involved that Mr. Bias had been given a large quantity of cocaine by mouth (in a soft drink, perhaps, as there was no alcohol in him) and the suggestion was advanced that it might not have been self-inflicted.

  Translated, that means there was a possibility that he had been murdered.

  This latter view was not advertised, and the two catchy phrases are still used for their "educational" value. Even the first time can kill. Even pure stuff can kill.

  The anti-drug bill, needless to say, passed by an impressive margin.

  Then, there was a train crash outside the city of Baltimore, in early 1987, that killed 16 people and injured 170 others. The newspapers trumpeted the discovery that the engineer responsible for the accident was found to have tested positive for the presence of marijuana in his body. This has been one of the major driving forces in focusing the public's attention on the need for urine testing as a necessary aspect of public safety, especially in the transportation area.

  Six months later, a review of the evidence in this case resulted in the appearance of a report which showed that the supervisor of the testing laboratory which had presented the marijuana findings (the FAA lab in Oklahoma City) had been fabricating drug test results for months.

  Results were being reported from tests that had never been performed, because there had been no one in the laboratory who knew how to run the sophisticated instruments.

  When an effort was made to challenge the specific findings in the case of this engineer, the original computer data had apparently been lost. And there was none of the original blood sample left for a re-analysis. It will never be known if that engineer had indeed been impaired by marijuana, but political and emotional capital is still being made from the original story.