Off-Case
T – Domestic
1NC T-Domestic
A. Interpretation
DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE IS DISTINCT FROM ORDINARY CRIME
Pfeiffer 4 Constance Pfeiffer, Juris Doctor candidate, The University of Texas School of Law, May 2004
The Review of Litigation Winter, 2004 23 Rev. Litig. 209 NOTE: Feeling Insecure?: United States v. Bin
Laden and the Merits of a Foreign-Intelligence Exception For Searches Abroad lexis
Courts regularly deal with the most difficult issues of our society. There is no reason to believe that federal
judges will be insensitive to or uncomprehending of the issues involved in domestic security cases. Certainly
courts can recognize that domestic surveillance involves different considerations from the surveillance
of "ordinary crime." If the threat is too subtle or complex for our senior law enforcement officers to convey its
significance to a court, one may question whether there is probable cause for surveillance. n141
B. Violation
The plan increases surveillance of ordinary crime which is distinct from foreign
surveillance.
C. THE AFFIRMATIVE INTERPRETATION IS BAD FOR DEBATE
Limits are necessary for negative preparation and clash, and their interpretation
makes the topic too big. Including surveillance of common crimes adds an entirely
different legal regime with different laws, judicial standards, and other issues for
THOUSANDS of different crimes.
D. T IS A VOTER because the opportunity to prepare promotes better debating
A2 Domestic = Geographic Location
DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE IS INTELLIGENCE GATHERING, The modifers "foreign" and
"domestic" distinguish the type of security threat, not the geographic location of the
surveillance
Small 8
MATTHEW L. SMALL. United States Air Force Academy 2008 Center for the Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Presidential Fellows Program paper "His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic
Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis"
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf
Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is first necessary to narrow the
scope of the term “domestic surveillance.” Domestic surveillance is a subset of intelligence gathering.
Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or
understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those
needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence, domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being
intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of
nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this
definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept. This paper’s analysis, in terms of President
Bush’s policies, focuses on electronic surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and obtaining caller
information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 defines electronic surveillance as:
Block Extension
THE NATURE OF THE SURVEILLANCE IS DIFFERENT
Bazan 7 Elizabeth B. Bazan, Congressional Research Service Legislative Attorney, American Law
Division
CRS Report The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: An Overview of the Statutory Framework and
U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review
Decisions
Updated February 15, 2007 https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL30465.pdf
Investigations for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence give rise to a tension between the Government’s
legitimate national security interests and the protection of privacy interests.6 The stage was set for legislation to
address these competing concerns in part by Supreme Court decisions on related issues. In Katz v. United
States
, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Court held that the protections of the Fourth Amendment extended to
circumstances involving electronic surveillance of oral communications without physical intrusion.7
The Katz Court stated, however, that its holding did not extend to cases involving national security.8
In United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972) ( the Keith case), the Court regarded Katz
as “implicitly recogniz[ing] that the broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy
which electronic surveillance entails necessitate the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards.”9 Mr. Justice
Powell, writing for the Keith Court, framed the matter before the Court as follows:
The issue before us is an important one for the people of our country and their Government. It involves the
delicate question of the President’s power, acting through the Attorney General, to authorize electronic
surveillance in internal security matters without prior judicial approval. Successive Presidents for more
than one-quarter of a century have authorized such surveillance in varying degrees, without guidance from the
Congress or a definitive decision of this Court. This case brings the issue here for the first time. Its
resolution is a matter of national concern, requiring sensitivity both to the Government’s right to protect itself
from unlawful subversion and attack and to the citizen’s right to be secure in his privacy against unreasonable
Government intrusion.10
The Court held that, in the case of intelligence gathering involving domestic security surveillance, prior judicial
approval was required to satisfy the Fourth Amendment.11 Justice Powell emphasized that the case before it
“require[d] no judgment on the scope of the President’s surveillance power with respect to the activities of
foreign
powers, within or without the country.”12 The Court expressed no opinion as to “the issues which may be
involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents.”13 However, the guidance which the Court
provided in
Keith with respect to national security surveillance in a domestic context to some degree presaged the approach
Congress was to take in foreign intelligence surveillance. The Keith Court observed in part:
...We recognize that domestic surveillance may involve different policy and practical considerations
from the surveillance of “ordinary crime.” The gathering of security intelligence is often long range
and involves the interrelation of various sources and types of information. The exact targets of such
surveillance may be more difficult to identify than in surveillance operations against many types of
crime specified in Title III [of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq.].
Often, too, the emphasis of domestic intelligence gathering is on the prevention of unlawful activity or the
enhancement of the Government’s preparedness for some possible future crisis or emergency. Thus, the focus
of domestic surveillance may be less precise than that directed against more conventional types of
crimes. Given these potential distinctions between Title III criminal surveillances and those involving
domestic security, Congress may wish to consider protective standards for the latter which differ from
those already prescribed for specified crimes in Title III. Different standards may be compatible with the
Fourth Amendment if they are reasonable both in relation to the legitimate need of Government for intelligence
information and the protected rights of our citizens. For the warrant application may vary according to the
governmental interest to be enforced and the nature of citizen rights deserving protection.... It may be that
Congress, for example, would judge that the application and affidavit showing probable cause need not follow
the exact requirements of § 2518 but should allege other circumstances more appropriate to domestic security
cases; that the request for prior court authorization could, in sensitive cases, be made to any member of a
specially designated court...; and that the time and reporting requirements need not be so strict as those in §
2518. The above paragraph does not, of course, attempt to guide the congressional judgment but rather to
delineate the present scope of our own opinion. We do not attempt to detail the precise standards for domestic
security warrants any more than our decision in Katz sought to set the refined requirements for the specified
criminal surveillances which now constitute Title III. We do hold, however, that prior judicial approval is
required for the type of domestic surveillance involved in this case and that such approval may be made in
accordance with such reasonable standards as the Congress may prescribe. 14
Neolib K
1NC Neolib K
The AFF’s paranoia of excessive government induces neoliberalism’s control of society
Anderson 12
Ben Anderson, Reader in the Department of Geography at Durham University, “Affect and biopower:
towards a politics of life,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 37, No. 1, p. 37-8,
fwang
By ‘affective condition’ I mean an affective atmosphere that predetermines how something – in this case the state – is habitually encountered, disclosed and can be related to. Bearing a family
resemblance to concepts such as ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1977) or ‘emotional situation’ (Virno 2004), an ‘affective condition’ involves the same doubled and seemingly contradictory sense
of the ephemeral or transitory alongside the structured or durable. As such, it does not slavishly determine action. An ‘affective condition’ shapes and influences as atmospheres are taken up
and reworked in lived experience, becoming part of the emotions that will infuse policies or programmes, and may be transmitted through assemblages of people, information and things that
State-phobia obviously exists in complex coexistence with other affective
conditions. To give but two examples, note how Connolly (2008) shows how existential bellicosity and ressentiments infuse the networks
of think tanks, media and companies that promote neoliberal policies. Or consider how Berlant (2008) shows how ‘nearly utopian’ affects
of belonging to a world of work are vital to the promise of neoliberal policies in the context of precariousness. In addition state-phobia has and will vary as it is
articulated with distinct political movements. For example, the USA ‘Tea Party’ phenomenon is arguably animated
by an intensified state-phobia named in the spectre of ‘Big Government’ and linked to a reactivation of Cold
War anxieties about the threat of ‘Socialism’. But the ‘Tea Party’ also involves a heady combination of white entitlement and racism, affective-ideational
attempt to organise life in terms of the market.
feelings of freedom, and the pervasive economic insecurity that follows from economic crisis.
How, then, do we get from state-phobia to a logic of governing that purports to govern ‘as little as possible’
but actually intervenes ‘all the way down’ through ‘permanent activity, vigilance and intervention’ (Foucault 2008,
246)? State-phobia traverses quite different apparatuses, and changes across those apparatuses. As Foucault puts it, it has many ‘agents and
promoters’ (2008, 76), meaning that it can no longer be localised. It circulates alongside the concern with excessive government, reappears in different sites and therefore
overflows any one neoliberalising apparatus (2008, 187). Hinting to a genealogy of state-affects, Foucault differentiates it from a similarly ‘ambiguous’
phobia at the end of the 18th century about despotism, as linked to tyranny and arbitrariness (2008, 76). State-phobia is different. It gives a
push to the question of whether government is excessive, and as such animates policies and programmes
that are based on extending the market form to all of society. State-phobia is, on this account, both cause and effect
of the neoliberal identification of an ‘economic-political invariant’ (2008, 111) across disparate forms of
economic intervention (including the New Deal, Keynesianism and Nazism). Developing Foucault’s brief comments on its ‘inflationary’ logic (2008, 187), we can think
of state-phobia as being bound up with the anticipatory hyper-vigilance of paranoia (Sedgwick 2003). It is based on an ‘elision
of actuality’ that passes over what the state is actually doing to always find the ‘great fantasy of the paranoiac and devouring state’
(Foucault 2008, 188). In short, neoliberalism is imbued with a suspicion of any state economic action that is not wholly in
the service of organising life around the market form.
This biopolitical neoliberalism creates multiple structural trends towards extinction
and cyclical violence
Szentes 8 (a Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest)
(Tamás, “Globalisation and prospects of the world society”, 4/22
http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/-Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf)
It’ s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has
been no world war, but --numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful
arms race and militarisation ha[s] not ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and
continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many “invisible
wars” are suffered by the poor and oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty,
unemployment, homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and
oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the denial or regular infringement of the
countries, --
., and last but not least, in the degradation of human
environment, which means that --the “war against Nature”, i.e. the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and largescale pollution of our environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism and “invisible
wars” we find striking international and intrasociety inequities and distorted development
patterns , which tend to generate social as well as international tensions, thus pav[e] the
way for unrest and “visible” wars. It is a commonplace now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace
democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc
between and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but also a systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of
the causes of “invisible wars”, of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities, exploitation and oppression. Peace
requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and
opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level
with an appropriate system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict
management, and thus also a global governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of accelerating globalisation and deepening
peace is indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and cannot
be safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or invisible wars.
global interdependencies in our world,
Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal opportunities for sustainable development. “Sustainability of
development” (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to the need for preserving the ecological
no ecological
balance can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intra-society
inequalities are substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any “zero-sum-games”, in which one
balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However,
can gain at the expense of others, but, instead, the “negative-sum-games” tend to predominate, in which everybody must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly,
losses. Therefore, the actual question is not about “sustainability of development” but rather about the “sustainability of human life”, i.e. survival of mankind – because
of ecological imbalance and globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk de la Rive Box was the president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the state and
future of development studies. We agreed that development studies are not any more restricted to the case of underdeveloped countries, as the developed ones (as well
as the former “socialist” countries) are also facing development problems, such as those of structural and institutional (and even system-) transformation, requirements
of changes in development patterns, and concerns about natural environment. While all these are true, today I would dare say that besides (or even instead of)
“development studies” we must speak about and make “survival studies”. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical, we live in an almost permanent
crisis of the world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also socio-psychological, behavioural, cultural and political aspects.
The narrow-minded, election-oriented, selfish behaviour motivated by thirst for power and
wealth, which still characterise the political leadership almost all over the world, paves the
way for the final, last catastrophe. One cannot doubt, of course, that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the world
in the last century. Such as decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some former fascist or authoritarian states,
institutionalisation of welfare policies in several countries, rise of international organisations and new forums for negotiations, conflict management and cooperation,
institutionalisation of international assistance programmes by multilateral agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of sovereignty and democracy also on
international level, collapse of the militarised Soviet bloc and system-change3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few. Nevertheless,
the crisis of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of bifurcation that necessarily puts an end to the present tendencies, either by the final
human society
cannot survive unless such profound intra-society and international inequalities prevailing
today are soon eliminated. Like a single spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew' divided into two parts: the rich, privileged,
catastrophe or a common solution. Under the circumstances provided by rapidly progressing science and technological revolutions,
wellfed, well-educated, on the one hand, and the poor, deprived, starving, sick and uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to be
“negative-sum-games”) can hardly be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society. Because of global interdependencies, the apparent winner
becomes also a loser. The real choice for the world society is between negative- and positive-sum-games: i.e. between, on the one hand, continuation of visible and
“invisible wars”, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the other, transformation of the world order by demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or
terminological camouflage can conceal this real dilemma any more, which is to be faced not in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming years,
because of global terrorism soon having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to irreversible changes in natural environment.
Our alternative is to refuse neoliberal subjectivity. We control the internal link to
political effectiveness of all social movements
Read 9
(Jason, The University of Southern Maine, A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the
Production of Subjectivity, Foucault Studies, No 6, pp. 25-36, February 2009)
Foucault’s development, albeit partial, of account of neoliberalism as governmentality has as its major
advantage a clarification of the terrain on which neoliberalism can be countered. It is not enough to
simply oppose neoliberalism as ideology, revealing the truth of social existence that it misses, or
to enumerate its various failings as policy. Rather any opposition to neoliberalism must take
seriously its effectiveness, the manner in which it has transformed work subjectivity and social
relationships. As Foucault argues, neoliberalism operates less on actions, directly curtailing them, then
on the condition and effects of actions, on the sense of possibility. The reigning ideal of interest and the
calculations of cost and benefit do not so much limit what one can do, neoliberal thinkers are famously
indifferent to prescriptive ideals, examining the illegal drug trade as a more or less rational investment,
but limit the sense of what is possible. Specifically the ideal of the fundamentally self-interested
individual curtails any collective transformation of the conditions of existence. It is not that
such actions are not prohibited, restricted by the dictates of a sovereign or the structures of
disciplinary power, they are not seen as possible, closed off by a society made up of selfinterested individuals. It is perhaps no accident that one of the most famous political implementers
of neoliberal reforms, Margaret Thatcher, used the slogan, “there is no alternative,” legitimating
neoliberalism based on the stark absence of possibilities. Similarly, and as part of a belated response to
the former Prime Minister, it also perhaps no accident that the slogan of the famous Seattle protests
against the IMF and World Bank was, “another world is possible,” and it is very often the sense of a
possibility of not only another world, but of another way of organizing politics that is
remembered, the image of turtles and teamsters marching hand and hand, when those protests are
referred to.26 It is also this sense of possibility that the present seems to be lacking; it is
difficult to imagine let alone enact a future other than a future dominated by interest and the
destructive vicissitudes of competition. A political response to neoliberalism must meet it on its
terrain, that of the production of subjectivity, freedom and possibility.
Link Extensions
1. Extend the 1NC Excessive Government Link – the aff’s state-phobia entrenches the
current system of neoliberalism by increasing the fear of all government action,
specifically economic action
2. The Border Link - Eliminating borders revitalizes neoliberalism and opens up
financial barriers that allows the market to access new sources of capital
Wilkie 2008 [Rob, Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, “Supply Chain Democracy
and Circuits of Imperialism”, Red Critique Fall/Winter 2008,
http://redcritique.org/FallWinter2008/supplychaindemocracyandcircuitsofimperialism.htm, Accessed 7/15/15, *modified for gendered
language, AX]
Second, it is argued that the development of post-labor means of production creates the conditions for
the expansion of capital globally, in turn disrupting the traditional boundaries between nations, thereby
creating a "flat" or "borderless" world of free cultural and financial exchange (Friedman, The World is
Flat; Ohmae, The Borderless World). What "flat" or "borderless" signifies is an increased "capitalization"
in the post-WWII period of formerly socialist and colonized nations and their incorporation into the
global system of production, either through the shifting of manufacture from the "North" to the "South"
("outsourcing"/"off-shoring") or by becoming integral players in a post-national "supply-chain" that has
been enabled by advances in communication as well as the opening up of trade and financial barriers to
free up the flow of formerly "trapped" or unproductive capital. Proponents of the "flat world" thesis
point to the expansion of international trade which, according to the IMF, "has grown five times in real
terms since 1980, and its share of world GDP has risen from 36 percent to 55 percent over this period"
(IMF 137). This "flattening" of the global economy, in which it is said that the expansion of production
and trade relations between nations constitute the emergence of a level playing field between formerly
unequal or hostile nations, is essentially premised upon a theory of a "universal evolution in the
direction of capitalism" (Fukuyama xv) in which there is no longer any "outside" to capitalism. In this
reading, the "developed" economies of the North have moved beyond the traditional economic cycle,
while transplanting the conditions of new growth and prosperity to the "developing" nations in the
South. As Martin Wolf writes, "In the post-war era, the most successful route to development seems to
have been via the export of labor-intensive manufactures, the route on which China has followed Hong
Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea" (147). The "problem" for the ideologists of capital and this
image of globalization as leveling the world is that insofar as concepts are abstractions of reality the
continuing existence of deep social and economic inequalities cannot be solved at the level of ideas and
thus still have to be explained. That is to say, even though "globalization" has become synonymous in
theory with the end of the economic challenges to capitalism's dominance, this does not change the
reality that the expansion of capitalism globally has corresponded in actuality with a rising level of
inequality and a sharpening of the class divide, both between the North and South, as well as within the
respective countries of each. This is because capitalism is a system that depends upon the exploitation
of labor. Regardless of whether or not the primary location of production is the North or the South, or
whether the workers work in factories that are highly mechanized or newly digitalized, it is the
production of surplus value extracted from the surplus labor of workers by owners that drives capitalism
forward. That exploitation remains even in the "global" factories of today is supported in a recent study
from the World Bank which, despite touting the results of "free-market" globalization as having reduced
the number of people living in poverty—defined as the ridiculously low, and ultimately arbitrary, sum of
less than $1 per day—by 260 million in the period 1990-2004, nonetheless showed that real inequality
between the rich and poor has actually increased during this time in 46 of the 59 developing countries
surveyed (4). Over the same period, a study by the International Monetary Fund also found that
"Inequality has been rising in countries across all income levels, except those classified as low income"
and that overall "the income share of the richest quintile has risen, whereas the shares of the remaining
quintiles have declined" (158-159). That the two main representatives of capitalist finance found rising
inequality and a sharpening of the class divide despite representing globalization as moving beyond class
binaries is due to the fact that the economic contradiction between capital and labor does not reside at
the level of the concept—in other words, the conflict over globalization is not simply a political or
intellectual struggle over how to best define the term—but rather in the property relations that enable
the owners of the means of production to accumulate capital at the expense of those who own only
their labor power. As Marx argued more than one hundred fifty years ago and which is proven once
again by the increases in global inequality, "even the most favorable situation for the working class,
namely, the most rapid growth of capital, however much it may improve the material life of the worker,
does not abolish the antagonism between [his/her] interests and the interests of the capitalist" (Wage
Labor and Capital 39). Even as developments of labor productivity result in new, higher standards of
living for some workers, these developments are always restricted under capitalism to the accumulation
of surplus value and thus it is always the interests of the bosses that will take precedence over the needs
of the working class.
3. The Cultural Normalization Link - Focusing on specific manifestations of the
surveillance state ignores the cultural normalization of surveillance writ large.
Giroux 14
Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and
Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University,
“Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” 2-10, Truth-out, http://www.truthout.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state, fwang
Surveillance has become a growing feature of daily life. In fact, it is more appropriate to analyze the culture of surveillance,
rather than address exclusively the violations committed by the corporate-surveillance state. In this instance, the
surveillance and security state is one that not only listens, watches and gathers massive amounts of
information through data mining necessary for identifying consumer populations but also acculturates the public into accepting
the intrusion of surveillance technologies and privatized commodified values into all aspects of their lives.
Personal information is willingly given over to social media and other corporate-based websites and
gathered daily as people move from one targeted web site to the next across multiple screens and digital
apparatuses. As Ariel Dorfman points out, “social media users gladly give up their liberty and privacy, invariably for the
most benevolent of platitudes and reasons,” all the while endlessly shopping online and texting.7A This collecting of information
might be most evident in the video cameras that inhabit every public space from the streets, commercial
establishments and workplaces to the schools our children attend as well as in the myriad scanners placed at the
entry points of airports, stores, sporting events and the like. ¶ Yet the most important transgression may not only be happening through the
unwarranted watching, listening and collecting of information but also in a culture that normalizes surveillance by upping the pleasure
quotient and enticements for consumers who use the new digital technologies and social networks to
simulate false notions of community and to socialize young people into a culture of security and
commodification in which their identities, values and desires are inextricably tied to a culture of private
addictions, self-help and commodification.
Medicinal PIC
1NC Medicinal PIC
Counter Plan Text: The United States Federal Government should end the “War on
Drugs” including the abolition of the DEA, eliminating all federal enforcement of illicit
drug laws and stopping all federal assistance of drug law enforcement by state and
local governments, except for the enforcement of illicit prescription drugs.
The counter plan solves through the same mechanism of the aff, no solvency deficits.
But, the aff legalizes too many drugs, including pharmaceuticals with dangerous side
effects, thalidomide proves
Margaret Hamburg, M.D., is Commissioner of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, 2-7-2012, "50
Years after Thalidomide: Why Regulation Matters," FDA,
http://blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/2012/02/50-years-after-thalidomide-why-regulation-matters/,
Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI
Fifty years ago, the vigilance of FDA medical officer Dr. Frances Kelsey prevented a public health tragedy
of enormous proportion by ensuring that the sedative thalidomide was never approved in the United
States. As many remember, in the early 1960’s, reports were coming in from around the world of
countless women who were giving birth to children with extremely deformed limbs and other severe
birth defects. They had taken thalidomide. Although it was being used in many countries, Dr. Kelsey
discovered that it hadn’t even been tested on pregnant animals. Dr. Kelsey’s reaction to thalidomide
exemplifies the FDA’s mission: protecting and promoting the health of the American people, using
science for regulatory decision-making. Now I know that in some circles regulation is viewed as a
roadblock to innovation and economic growth. But in actuality, when done right, regulation isn’t a
roadblock; it’s the actual pathway to achieving real and lasting innovation. Smart, science-based
regulation instills consumer confidence in products and treatments. It levels the playing field for
businesses. It decreases the threat of litigation. It prevents recalls that threaten industry reputation and
consumer trust, not to mention levying huge preventable costs on individual companies and entire
industries. And it spurs industry to excellence. The tragedy of thalidomide led to changes that
strengthened both the regulatory and scientific environment for medical product development and
review. In response to the public uproar, in 1962 Congress enacted the Kefauver-Harris amendments to
the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Thanks to these new amendments, manufacturers had to
prove that a drug was not only safe, but also effective. Approvals had to be based on sound science.
Companies had to monitor safety reports that emerged postmarket and adhere to good manufacturing
practices that would lead to consistently safe products. And there were new protections for patients.
The amendments not only benefited patients, they helped industry, raising scientific standards that
eventually ushered in today’s sophisticated, science-based life sciences industry. For the very first time,
many companies put in place research and development programs, including the design and
implementation of controlled clinical trials. Major therapeutic breakthroughs resulted, including the use
of beta blockers in patients after a heart attack and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibiters to
improve survival in patients with heart failure. All of these were good news for public health and for
corporate bottom lines. The best drugs and treatments rose to the top, not simply those that were most
heavily marketed.
Unapproved Prescription Drugs are Illegal
The FDA’s unapproved drugs are illegal drugs
FDA, 9/19/2011, “Guidance for FDA Staff and Industry: Marketed Unapproved Drugs – Compliance
Policy Guide”, FDA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Center for Drug Evaluation and
Research;
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/drugs/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidances/ucm07029
0.pdf, Date Accessed 8/1/15, JL @ DDI
FDA intends to evaluate on a case-by-case basis whether justification exists to exercise enforcement
discretion to allow continued marketing for some period of time after FDA determines that a product is
being marketed illegally. In deciding whether to allow such a grace period,9 we may consider the
following factors: (1) the effects on the public health of proceeding immediately to remove the illegal
products from the market (including whether the product is medically necessary and, if so, the ability of
legally marketed products to meet the needs of patients taking the drug); (2) the difficulty associated
with conducting any required studies, preparing and submitting applications, and obtaining approval of
an application; (3) the burden on affected parties of immediately removing the products from the
market; (4) the Agency's available enforcement resources; and (5) any special circumstances relevant to
the particular case under consideration. However, as stated above, FDA does not intend to apply any
such grace period to an unapproved drug that was introduced onto the market after September 19,
2011.
Unapproved drugs are illegal
FDA, 6-2-2015, "Unapproved Prescription Drugs: Drugs Marketed in the United States That Do Not
Have Required FDA Approval," FDA,
http://www.fda.gov/drugs/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/enforcementactivitiesbyfda/
selectedenforcementactionsonunapproveddrugs/default.htm, Date Accessed 8/1/15, JL @ DDI
The Agency has serious concerns that drugs marketed without required FDA approval may not meet
modern standards for safety, effectiveness, quality, and labeling. Physicians and other healthcare
practitioners, along with consumers, cannot assume that all marketed drugs have been found by the
FDA to be safe and effective. For a variety of historical reasons, some drugs, mostly older products,
continue to be marketed illegally in the U.S. without required FDA approval. The manufacturers of
unapproved drug products have not received FDA approval and do not conform to a monograph for
making over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. The lack of evidence demonstrating that these unapproved drugs
are safe and effective is a significant public health concern.
Prescription Drug Solvency
FDA regulation of prescription drugs is key to prevent dangerous pharmaceuticals
Taylor and Crowley, 2009
(Tia Taylor, MPH, and Ryan Crowley, 20 April 2009, “IMPROVING FDA REGULATION OF PRESCRIPTION
DRUGS”, American College of Physicians,
https://www.acponline.org/advocacy/current_policy_papers/assets/fda.pdf, Date Accessed 7/27/15, JL
@ DDI)
What Does FDA Regulation of Prescription Drugs Entail? Prescription drugs are vital to preventing and
treating illness and helping to avoid costlier health problems. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is
charged with the mammoth and complex task of regulating the safety and effectiveness of new and
approved drugs. The FDA reviews proposals for conducting clinical drug trials, evaluates drug
applications and proposed drug labeling, and monitors drugs once they are approved and marketed. The
current system of drug safety monitoring includes preclinical testing followed by three phases of clinical
studies. To obtain approval for a marketing drug in the U.S., drug sponsors must submit a new drug
application that details the completed clinical drug trials and includes data on safety and effectiveness,
pharmacology, toxicology, chemistry, manufacturing information, and proposed labeling language. The
applications are evaluated by FDA reviewers and other experts who help the FDA determine whether to
approve a drug for marketing. The FDA Amendments Act of 2007 increased the FDA’s regulatory
authority for postmarketing surveillance activities, enabling the FDA to require postmarketing testing to
identify or assess potential serious risks.
NB Extensions
Dangerous drugs like laetrile will rebound without surveillance
Abc News, 1-6-2006, "FDA Cracks Down on Laetrile Resurgence," ABC News,
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117990, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI
Federal health officials warned Internet users to beware of a concoction made of apricot seeds that’s
touted as a cancer cure, as a Florida court case became the government’s latest attempt to quell a
resurgence of laetrile. In the 1970s, thousands of patients went to Mexico seeking laetrile, and some
doctors even sold it in the United States, before a National Cancer Institute study concluded that the
substance did not fight cancer. Experts also warned that laetrile pills could cause cyanide poisoning.
Subsequently, the Food and Drug Administration declared laetrile illegal. Several states fought the FDA
action but courts backed the government, ending laetrile’s heyday by 1980. Now laetrile is rebounding
on the Internet, sometimes sold under the aliases amygdalin or “vitamin B17.” On Wednesday, the FDA
announced that a U.S. District judge in Miami had issued a preliminary injunction halting sales of laetrile
by three Internet sites, and warned consumers to beware. Patients Forego Therapy “We do not want
people to take products that have not been proven to be safe and effective,” said FDA enforcement
chief John Taylor, noting that the biggest worry is that patients will forego proven cancer therapy. The
judge’s ruling temporarily stops laetrile sales by World Without Cancer Inc. and Health World
International Inc., of Bay Harbor, Fla., and Arizona-based Health Genesis Corp., which also does business
in Bay Harbor, while the court considers an FDA lawsuit seeking to permanently halt the sales. The FDA
said since 1998 its inspectors have warned David E. Arjona, an official of all three companies, that
laetrile is illegal, yet those inspectors were able to buy laetrile from his Web site in June. Arjona did not
return a phone call. His attorney, Kirkpatrick Dilling of Chicago, was not aware of the preliminary
injunction, but said his client “hasn’t sold one thing that’s harmful to anybody.” The Florida case is the
FDA’s third laetrile crackdown this year, part of the agency’s new attempt to block Internet sales of
unapproved drugs. In April, a federal judge ordered a New York company to stop selling laetrile; in July,
a federal grand jury indicted an Ohio laetrile seller.
Legalization CP
1NC Legalization CP
Counter Plan Text: The United States should legalize all currently illegal drugs.
US legalization spills over globally
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
C. The Protagonist: The United States of America
A successful legalization regime implies that, in theory, every nation across the globe should legalize
drugs. However, in practice, convincing every nation to do so in the short term is far from plausible.
Mexico may seem to be the logical choice to take the first step toward universal legalization because of
its recent drug problems. However, Mexico has a relatively low level of consumption of illicit drugs: 0.8%
of the population use cocaine and 3.1% use marijuana,133 both near global averages.134 With such a
minor share of the demand for drugs, legalization in Mexico would barely affect the global market.
Additionally, immediate legalization in Mexico could lead to even more violence because of its ongoing
trafficking problem. Without strictly enforced regulation, the traffickers in Mexico could potentially use
legalization to their advantage to increase their business in other countries where drugs are still illegal. A
better candidate to take the first step toward universal legalization is the United States. In the words of
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, speaking on behalf of the United States, "Our insatiable demand for
illegal drugs fuels the drug trade."135 About 3% of U.S. citizens aged fifteen to sixty-four use cocaine
(more than six times the global average) and 12.3% use marijuana (more than three times the global
average).136 Those numbers equate to about 30% of all cocaine [End Page 923] users globally and 14%
of all marijuana users. In addition, the United States—which comprises only 5% of the world's
population—consumed 60% of the world's drugs in 1996.137 That number could be different now, but it
puts this analysis in perspective. Either way, the United States is one of the leading consumers of illicit
drugs worldwide. If the United States legalized drugs, it would have a profound effect on the market.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said it best: "If there isn't a generalized, universal legalization policy
across the world, and mainly in the main drug consumer, the United States, there won't even be any
economic benefits, because the price is determined by the American market."138 The United States is
also a good candidate because other nations tend to follow its drug policies. Because the United States
is the leader of the war on drugs, its drug policies have dominated the United Nations and other global
organizations.139 With the United States at the helm of legalization, other countries would quickly
follow, and universal legalization could become a reality. D. The Setting: Right Now In the drug
legalization debate, the best time to act is now. With each passing day, more people lose their lives to
the drug war. Still, skeptics do not see this policy as plausible any time soon. Nevertheless, legalization in
the United States is not merely a pipe dream. The recent passing of Mexico's new decriminalization law
marks a milestone in global drug policy. A pattern of the United States quashing Mexico's plans to alter
its drug policy developed in recent years. Most recently, in 2006, Mexico was close to enacting a similar
decriminalization law, but Mexican President Vicente Fox vetoed the bill—one he had supported—after
he received pressure from George W. Bush's administration.140 However, Mexico's recent
decriminalization law passed in 2009 without U.S. opposition.141 The Obama administration stated that
it is taking a "wait-and-see" approach to this legislation.142 Although it is not legalization, it appears
that the United States is finally opening the door to the possibility of altering its drug policies after forty
years of failures. [End Page 924]
And, that legalization has a laundry list of benefits- decrease in violence, other illicit
markets, and a boosted economy
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
B. The Plot: Universal Legalization
The most efficient way to affect the global market is to legalize drugs, as prohibition acts as a catalyst in
building up the market. It attracts criminals, incentivizes violence, and makes the drug trade one of the
most profitable industries in the world. Universal legalization would reverse these trends. It would take
the profits out of the industry and put a stop to violent trafficking, possibly ending the drug trade as we
know it. When advocates lobby for the legalization or decriminalization of drugs, they often argue from
a domestic stance. They see legalization as an opportunity to reallocate police resources, free up prison
space, reduce violent crime among drug dealers and consumers, and tax the industry.118 While all of
these prospects are inherently part of legalization—and probably bolster this argument even more—this
Note focuses on eradicating the global drug trafficking problem. The costs [End Page 919] and benefits
of legalization should be assessed on the global level, not on the purely domestic level regarding drug
problems each nation inevitably faces.119 The concept of legalization entails legalizing every aspect of
the drug trade, from production to consumption, worldwide. The immediate benefit of legalization
would be a reduction in the violence associated with the drug trafficking aspect of the trade. Prohibition
creates the opportunity for self-help violence in the drug trade by driving the market underground.120
Legalization would create a legitimate market for drugs, allowing conflicts to be settled in courts of law
and attracting commendable market players rather than criminals, much like what happened after the
prohibition of alcohol ended in the United States in the 1930s.121 Skeptics may argue that the violent
drug trafficking criminals would not simply become peaceful after legalization occurs. This argument has
some merit, but these violent criminals would be sifted out of the industry over time. They would most
likely focus their attention on other closely linked illicit trade markets that still offer higher profits, like
the arms trade and human trafficking. However, without the enormous income of the drug trade, these
other illicit industries would also likely suffer. The long-term effects of legalization are most easily
illustrated by an economic analysis of the global market. Although the market structures are
complicated—drug cartels create a monopoly-like market with fewer players, called an oligopoly—a
simple supply and demand analysis will best demonstrate these effects. Due to the increased costs of
the global business resulting from prohibition—such as avoiding authorities and violence—the current
supply curve for illicit drugs is relatively steep.122 Governments are effectively taxing producers and
traffickers by imposing these extra costs; consequently, each unit of drugs is sold at a higher price than it
would if drugs were legal.123 In Figure 4 above, the supply curve of drugs under prohibition is labeled
S1. If drugs were legalized, the supply curve would flatten out, becoming more elastic, because the
additional costs and barriers to entry of the illicit industry would no longer exist.124 The costs of
production and distribution would be lower for each unit of drugs, so a lower price would be charged. In
Figure 4, the supply curve of drugs under legalization is labeled S2. The demand for drugs, under any
policy, is relatively inelastic. The consumption of drugs stays relatively constant when price fluctuates.
This is partly due to the addictive nature of drugs—even when price goes up people still need drugs—
and the fact that some people will not consume drugs, regardless of how low the price is. In Figure 4,
the demand curve under prohibition is labeled D1. If drugs are legalized, demand is likely to increase
because the cost to the consumer is lower. However, this increase is likely to be modest because the
legal status of drugs tends to have little effect on whether most people choose to consume drugs.125
Evidence of these phenomena can be abstracted from the U.S. experience with the prohibition of
alcohol, a similar market. During Prohibition, alcohol consumption did not vary greatly with the change
in price, and, after its repeal, consumption did not increase substantially.126 In Figure 4, the demand
curve under legalization is labeled D2. The net effect of a change in drug policy from prohibition to
legalization is a sharp decrease in price and a modest increase in quantity demanded. Figure 4 above
provides price and quantity numbers as an example to better understand this economic situation. As
[End Page 921] seen in Figure 4, equilibrium127 price drops from twelve to four, while quantity
demanded increases slightly from seven to ten. The difference that most concerns the global drug trade
is the net change in revenue. In Figure 4, revenues (the shaded regions) drop drastically from eighty-four
under prohibition to forty under legalization, a fifty-two percent reduction. Less revenue in the drug
market equates to substantially lower profits for drug traffickers. With lower profits, criminals will likely
leave the drug market, abandoning drug production in search of other more profitable, and likely illicit,
markets. Additionally, the illicit drug market is closely linked to these other illicit markets, like the arms
trade, human trafficking, and terrorism. For instance, illegal investments in the drug trade often fund
criminal organizations that procure weapons in the arms trade and train terrorists.128 Without the
profits from the $500 billion drug industry, many of these other illicit markets may suffer as well, a
substantial benefit to the war on terror.
Solvency Extensions
Both the federal and state governments would regulate drugs after legalization, solves
best
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
Heavy government regulation of the new, legal drug industry is the best solution to these problems.
Governments could regulate everything from the cultivation to the consumption of the newly legal
drugs, much like the United States has with tobacco and alcohol. In the United States, substantial
legislation by both the federal and state governments would be needed to fully regulate the industry
and make legalization a success. The cultivation and manufacturing processes would be the first part of
the regulatory framework. The government could allow consumers to [End Page 925] cultivate small
amounts of drugs for personal use, like the twenty-five square foot plot limit proposed in Proposition
19,148 or could outlaw private growing altogether. This decision would likely turn on which crops are
being grown and the corresponding dangers of producing specific drugs. For instance, growing a small
amount of marijuana would be relatively harmless and could be permitted. However, if crops, like the
coca plant, require further manufacturing to produce the actual drug, governments could limit its
private cultivation. For farmers or those growing larger plots, a permit could be required to grow the
drug crops. Manufacturers would also need specific regulations detailing the proper manufacturing
processes and product specifications. This would ensure a safer product then what may be currently
available on the black market. Some might argue that there will still be a demand for these more
dangerous forms of drugs. However, the relatively lower price of the safer, legally manufactured drugs
and the fear of punishment from consuming the still illegal forms of drugs will likely deter consumption
of the illegal, less safe drugs. The distribution of the newly legal drugs could also be heavily regulated.
The local distribution of drugs from sellers to consumers would likely be a state law issue. States could
regulate which businesses are allowed to sell drugs, potentially requiring permits to sell drugs, similar to
liquor licenses. The distribution of drugs would also involve a great deal of federal regulation. First, the
federal government could highly tax drug sales to provide the nation with a thriving source of revenue.
This tax rate, however, must not be set excessively high. If the tax is set too high, the price of drugs
could rise to an artificially high level, inviting competition from violent drug traffickers. Second, the
federal government could regulate the international trade of drugs. To prevent drug trafficking by
violent traders, importers would be required to acquire some sort of authentication. This would assure
that the money for the imported drugs would not be used to support violent or criminal activities.
Governments could also impose additional excise taxes on the importation and exportation of the drugs.
Possession and consumption could also be heavily regulated. Similar to decriminalization laws in
European countries and Mexico, consumers could be allowed to possess drugs up to a certain quantity
for personal use. This law would deter distribution by sellers who are not approved. The consumption of
drugs would also have limitations. The provisions of Proposition 19 seem to be reasonable: consumption
is limited to adults twenty-one years or older, in nonpublic places, and out of the presence of children.
States could also enact more specific criminal laws [End Page 926] regarding driving under the influence
of drugs, public consumption, and other comparable regulations. State laws on alcohol consumption
would provide a good barometer for these newly enacted laws. However, these drug laws should be
much more stringent than some laws regarding alcohol to ensure public safety. For example, instead of
a "legal limit" similar to driving under the influence of alcohol, there should be a no-tolerance policy for
driving under the influence of drugs.
Legalization and regulation of drugs prevents the dangers of currently illegal drugs,
MDMA and alcohol prove
Franklin and Hellwich, 2014
(Major Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of more than
100,000 law enforcement officials and supporters opposed to the war on drugs and a 34-year veteran
police officer, and Mikayla Hellwich, Horticulture student at the University of Maryland and the
outreach coordinator and former president of the university's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug
Policy, 01/23/2014, “What We Can't Seem to Remember About MDMA and Why Legalizing Drugs Will
Save Your Child's Life”, the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neill-franklin/mdmalegalization_b_4044755.html, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
Thanks to our failed experiment with alcohol prohibition, we know that it's impossible to keep people
away from intoxicants, legal or otherwise. The difference is in how we treat those who favor certain
substances over others. If Budweiser were suddenly implicated in a salmonella outbreak, there would be
a furious investigation. People would ask why nobody had been monitoring the safety equipment, why
no one was sanitizing the bottles. We regulate beer so that millions of people who enjoy it every day
don't fall ill because of low quality standards or because someone's been pouring paint thinner into the
brew. Regulation also keeps us from getting hit by the stray bullets of gangs fighting over the local Bud
Light distribution. But for the many illicit drugs that, unlike alcohol, a substance that kills thousands of
people every year, do not have the government's seal of approval, there are no such guarantees. MDMA
(methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) is a crystalline off-white to brownish substance known to
cause feelings of euphoria banned by the U.S. government. This is what Molly, a drug linked to some
deaths in the news recently, is intended to be (and can be, depending on the source) but because of
large profits to be made, its place on the illegal market, and lack of public drug literacy, Molly is often
sold as a mystery bag of off-white powders. There are numerous cheaper chemicals that appear similar
but that can be deadly in much lower doses, making buying Molly off the street a dangerous
proposition. Victims of the unregulated market include Jeffrey Russ and Olivia Rotondo, who died from
overdoses at a recent festival in New York City. Olivia reportedly told paramedics she ingested six hits of
Molly before dying. There is no standard unit of measurement for a single "hit" of the drug, however,
and Olivia had no way of knowing if what she took was actually MDMA. The difficult truth is that if the
drug she wanted were legal, she and Jeffrey might still be alive. They would have known what they were
buying and exactly how much to take while minimizing harm. Their drugs would have been labeled with
safety precautions necessary to alleviate common symptoms -- such as taking magnesium to reduce
bruxism, sipping on an electrolyte-infused beverage to stay hydrated, and replenishing the brain's
serotonin supply with a 5-HTP supplement.
United States = Fed and State Governments
Unites States includes federal and state
Black Law 90 Black's Law Dictionary 1990 p 695
In the United States, government consists of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in addition to
administrative agencies. In a broader sense, includes the federal government and all its agencies and
bureaus, state and county governments, and city and township governments.
United States is a collective term – both the federal government and the states
Oakly 9 American Civil Procedure: A Guide to Civil Adjudication in US Courts, Edited by John Bilyeu
Oakley, Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, and Vikram D. Amar, Professor of Law and
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the School of Law of the University of California at Davis, Kluwer
Law International, 2009, page 19
Although it is commonplace today to refer to “the United States” as a single entity and as the subject of
statements that grammatically employ singular verbs, it is important to remember that “the United States”
remains in many important ways a collective term. The enduring legal significance of the fifty states that
together constitute the United States, and their essential dominion over most legal matters affecting
day-to-day life within the United States, vastly complicates any attempt to summarize the civil
procedures within the United States. Within the community of nations, the United States is a
geopolitical superpower that acts through a federal government granted constitutionally specified and
limited powers. The organizing principle of the federal Constitution,1 however, is one of popular
sovereignty, with governmental powers distributed in the first instance to republican institutions
of government organized autonomously and uniquely in each of the fifty states. Although there are
substantial similarities in the organization of state governments, idiosyncrasies abound.
The United States is a comprised of 50 states (and Washington DC), overseen legally
by federal and state courts, with differences defined by jurisdiction
Michael R. McCurdy, Director, Fairfield and Woods, PC, and Jason B. Robinson, Trial attorney whose
practice focuses primarily on complex commercial and environmental litigation, “Tort Law in the United
States”, December 2010,http://www.fwlaw.com/news/186-tort-law-united-states
a result, the
legal system in the United States is divided into two separate courts: federal and state courts. The
differences between federal and state courts are defined mainly by jurisdiction, which refers to
the types of cases a court is allowed to decide.
The United States of America is
unique in that it is comprised of a federal district and fifty states. As
A2 Perms
1. Regulation DA – without surveillance, the CP can never regulate drugs, links to the
case arguments and NB of the CP
2. The perm links to the (Terror/Cartel) DA(s), without surveillance we cannot prevent
a porous border or terror networks
A2 Links to Cartels
1. The 1NC evidence proves that legalization actually decreases violence, whereas the
aff makes the business more lucrative
And, more evidence, American illegal drug consumption fuels cartel violence
Muñoz, 2014
(Andrés E., a 2015 JD candidate from Seattle University School of Law, graduated from the University of
Washington in 2012 with BAs in History and Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Fall, 2014, “STUDENT
SCHOLARSHIP: Blunt the Violence: How Legal Marijuana Regulation in the United States Can Help End
the Cartel Violence in Mexico”, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 13 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 691, LexisNexis,
Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
The driving force of cartel power is the demand for drugs in the United States. People in the United
States spend approximately $ 65 billion a year on illegal drugs, and drug-related damages amount to
about $ 110 billion per year. n40 A report by the US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control
published in 2012 stated that about 22.6 million people in the United States over the age of 12 were
illegal drug users, accounting for almost nine percent of the population and representing the largest
proportion in the past decade. n41 Of all illegal drugs used in the United States, marijuana places first,
representing over 60 percent of all illegal drug use with 17.4 million users in 2010, followed by 7 million
psychotherapeutic users, 1.5 million cocaine users, 1.2 million hallucinogen users, 0.7 million inhalant
users, and [*701] 0.2 million heroin users. n42 Thus this article focuses on how current and upandcoming laws that legalize recreational marijuana can be tailored to drive the cartels out of business. The
Senate Caucus also found that "[m]ost Americans are unaware of the impact that illegal drug
consumption has in fomenting violence in drug trafficking countries in Latin America[,]" citing Mexico as
an example. n43 During her term as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stated that in the United States,
"[o]ur insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade." n44 She also stated, "We know very well
that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States and that they
are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States." n45 Clinton's comments appear to be
the first comments made by a public official of her capacity that admitted that the United States is
largely responsible for the violence in Mexico. It is clear from the abovementioned statistics and the
statements made by Hillary Clinton that the enormous demand for illegal drugs in the United States
fuels Mexican drug cartels. Although most legal, academic, and media sources differ as to how the drug
problem in the United States should be solved, it appears that most sources agree that it is a problem
that needs to be resolved, not just by tackling the drug abuse problem in the United States, but also by
ending the demand for drugs that provide the cartels with a means to exist.
Politics Links
Marijuana Unpopular
Decriminalization of marijuana is unpopular in Congress, public perception doesn’t
matter
Will Oremus, 2-1-2012, "Why Doesn’t Anyone in Washington Take Marijuana Legalization Seriously?,"
Slate Magazine, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/02/
pot_legalization_why_doesn_t_anyone_in_washington_take_marijuana_policy_seriously_.html, Date
Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI
While voters have mellowed out, their representatives in Congress haven’t. A legalization bill was
introduced in Congress last year for the first time, but few expect it to even come up for a vote. Its sponsors are
Barney Frank and Ron Paul, legislators who have built their reputations by taking unpopular stands. Those with something to lose—
like, say, an election—still won’t touch the issue. When Obama did field a marijuana question in a YouTube chat last year, he
laughed at it. “I don’t know what this says about the online audience,” he chortled. Why won’t the president, or anyone else in Washington,
take marijuana policy seriously? Pro-legalization types see it as a mere matter of time before the government catches up to the rest of the
country. “The conventional wisdom for decades has been that this is a dangerous issue,” activist Tom Angell told me. “Behind the scenes
people will say, ‘I agree, you’re totally right, we need to change these laws, but I’m afraid to say so.’ For
some reason it’s still
perceived as a political third rail.” A primary reason for lawmakers’ reticence is that, for decades, the most
visible advocates of looser weed laws have been, well, weed smokers—and what serious politician wants to be
associated with a bunch of stoners, man? Earlier this decade, wealthy liberals like George Soros and Peter Lewis (once busted for
pot-smoking himself) recognized that problem and shifted the debate to medical marijuana, giving the movement a more sympathetic public
face: an ailing grandmother rather than a dreadlocked coach potato. Several states have since passed medical marijuana laws, but they don’t
address the bigger issue at play here. It’s recreational users, not glaucoma patients, whose money fuels the illicit drug trade that finances
criminal gangs. That’s why Angell’s group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, has taken a different approach. It enlists cops and ex-cops to
testify to the societal impacts of the failed drug war, pushing decriminalization and legalization as prudent policy solutions. It’s an appeal to
reason, not compassion. Downing, the former LAPD cop who asked the YouTube question, is a LEAP board member. The support his video got,
from the public if not from Google, testifies to his message’s broad appeal. While
the tactic seems to be working in some
liberal states, it has yet to make pot legalization safe for lawmakers in Washington. Anti-drug leaders see
that as evidence that Angell is wrong when he argues that it’s just a matter of time. Asa Hutchinson, the former
Arkansas congressman who led the Drug Enforcement Administration under George W. Bush, told me he doesn’t see a big difference in how
the debate is playing out in Washington today as compared to 10 years ago. That may be partly a function of congressional demographics and
partly a matter of incentives. Even
if 50 percent of the public supports legalization, a pro-pot bill will never pass
the Senate if those people are concentrated on the coasts. There’s also the fact that potheads tend to be
less likely to vote than senior citizens, who came of age in the pre-hippie era and have never inhaled. If legalization
opponents are willing to back up their conviction at the ballot box, there’s a lot of risk and little reward
for a congressman to assume the marijuana mantle. Hutchinson proposed a different explanation for the perceived
disconnect between Washington and public opinion: There’s not actually a disconnect. Asked by a pollster whether they support
legalization, Hutchinson says, voters may shrug and say, “Why not?” But ask them just how legalized
marijuana should be regulated, how it should be taxed, and whether it should be sold at the corner store in their neighborhood,
and they’ll quickly change their tune. That seemed to happen even in liberal California, where a referendum on
legalized marijuana failed in 2010 in part because voters worried about the mechanisms for ensuring proper oversight.
Borders Unpopular
Obama will fight for border control- Recent meeting proves
Wolfgang 14 (Ben Wolfgang: Covers the White House for The Washington Times, “Obama: I’ve fought
against activists who believe there should be open borders”, The Washington Times, 12/9/2014,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/obama-ive-fought-against-activists-openborders/, Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)
the president said he’s
pushed back against those who believe the U.S. should have an open border with Mexico.¶ At a town-hall
meeting in Nashville on Tuesday, Mr. Obama defended the idea of a strong U.S-Mexico border and said he’s had heated
debates with activists who want that border to disappear.¶ “There have been times, honestly, I’ve had arguments with immigration rights
Critics say President Obama went too far with his executive action granting amnesty to more than 4 million illegal immigrants — but behind the scenes,
activists who say, effectively, ‘There shouldn’t be any rules. These are good people. Why should we have any enforcement like this?’ My response is, ‘In the eyes of God, everybody is equal … I
the president said. “If we
had no system of enforcing our borders and our laws, I promise you, everybody would try to come
here.”¶ Mr. Obama added that it would be fundamentally unfair to erase the nation’s southern border.¶
don’t make any claims my child is superior to anybody else’s child. But I’m the president of the United States, and nation states have borders,’”
“Sometimes it’s just an accident that one person lives in a country that has a border with the U.S. and another person — in Somalia, it’s a lot harder to get here,” he said.
Changing NSA Surveillance Unpopular
Obama will fight to maintain NSA surveillance – Recent court case proves (links to
their DEA solvency evidence)
Ackerman 6/9 (Spencer Ackerman: National security editor for Guardian, “Obama lawyers asked
secret court to ignore public court's decision on spying”, The Guardian, 6/9/2015,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/obama-fisa-court-surveillance-phone-records,
Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)
Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk
surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records
of millions of Americans for six months.¶ The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning
precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with
any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.¶ US officials confirmed last week that they
would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the
surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back
on.
The
Schumer Link—Border Surveillance
Schumer supports systematic border surveillance and militarization
On The Issues 14 (On The Issues, "Charles Schumer on Immigration",
www.ontheissues.org/International/Charles_Schumer_Immigration.htm, 12/14/2014, sr)
What changes to our current immigration policy do you support? A: I
support further securing our borders; prohibiting
hiring of undocumented immigrants by requiring job applicants to present a secure Social Security card;
creating jobs by attracting the world's best and brightest to America, and keeping them here; requiring
undocumented immigrants to register with the government, pay taxes, and earn legal [status or face
deportation.] Establishes specified benchmarks which must be met before the guest worker and legalization programs may be initiated:
operational control of the border with Mexico; Border Patrol increases; border barriers, including
vehicle barriers, fencing, radar, and aerial vehicles; detention capacity for illegal aliens apprehended
crossing the US-Mexico border; workplace enforcement, including an electronic employment
verification system; and Z-visa alien processing. Within 18 months, achieves operational control over U.S. land and maritime
borders, including: systematic border surveillance through more effective use of personnel and technology;
and physical infrastructure enhancements to prevent unlawful border entry Defines "operational
control" as the prevention of all unlawful U.S. entries, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful
aliens, narcotics, and other contraband.
Marijuana Popular
Public favors marijuana legalization, significant shifts in state policy prove
Muñoz, 2014
(Andrés E., a 2015 JD candidate from Seattle University School of Law, graduated from the University of
Washington in 2012 with BAs in History and Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Fall, 2014, “STUDENT
SCHOLARSHIP: Blunt the Violence: How Legal Marijuana Regulation in the United States Can Help End
the Cartel Violence in Mexico”, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 13 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 691, LexisNexis,
Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
For the first time in more than 40 years since this issue was first polled, US residents favor legalizing
marijuana usage. n113 A national survey found that 52 percent support the legalization of marijuana
while 45 percent do not, an increase of 11 percentage points since 2010. n114 This shift in popular
opinion regarding marijuana marks a substantial change from 1969, when just 12 percent were in favor
of its legalization and 84 percent were opposed. n115 Young voters--those born since 1980, now
between the ages of 18 and 34--are the strongest group in favor of its legalization with 65 [*714]
percent in favor, n116 reflecting that in the coming years, as younger voters increase in voting turnout,
the issue of marijuana legalization will likely shift more rapidly in favor of its legalization. All age groups
polled are now more in favor of marijuana's legalization than ever before, including Generation X with
54 percent, the Baby Boomers with 50 percent, and the Silent Generation with 32 percent. n117 The
shift in public opinion on marijuana has been so significant that recreational marijuana is now legal in
four states and the District of Columbia. Washington and Colorado captured national attention in the
2012 election by legalizing recreational marijuana use. n118 Voters in Washington approved I-502 by
55.7 percent, n119 legalizing possession of up to one ounce of loose leaf marijuana, 16 ounces of a solid
product, and 72 ounces of marijuana infused liquid for adults aged 21 and over. n120 Likewise, 55
percent of Colorado voters approved Amendment 64, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act of 2012,
legalizing possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and the cultivation of up to six cannabis plants.
n121
Drug legalization is becoming more popular
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
Furthermore, the public perception of legalizing drugs appears to be shifting in the United States. In
November 2010, Californians voted on Proposition 19, which was also known as the Regulate, Control
and Tax Cannabis Act.143 Proposition 19 would have permitted possession of up to an ounce of
marijuana by adults aged twenty-one and older, as well as its consumption in nonpublic places, out of
the presence of children.144 Moreover, it would have also allowed the private growing of marijuana in
up to twenty-five square foot plots.145 The initiative was narrowly defeated with 46.5% voting in favor
of Proposition 19.146 Although the ballot initiative did not pass, experts believe that this issue will be on
many states' ballots in the near future, a sign that legalization is a realistic option.147
Cartels DA
1NC Cartels Shell
Violence is declining now which gives Mexico time to solve its legitimacy problems
and reinforce the rule of law
Gomez 4/30
(Alan Gomez, "After years of drug wars, murders decline in Mexico," USA TODAY. 430-2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/30/mexico-drugwar-homicides-decline/26574309///ghs-kw)
Murders in Mexico fell for a third straight year in 2014 — the most pronounced declines occurring
along the U.S. border — a sign the country is slowly stabilizing after gruesome drug wars. There were 15,649 people murdered in
Mexico in 2014, a 13.8% reduction from the previous year and down from a peak of 22,480 in 2011, according to a report set to
be released Thursday by the University of San Diego's Justice in Mexico Project. The reductions were steeper along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Five of the six Mexican states that border the USA reported a combined drop of 17.7% in the number of
homicides. "These data really help to underscore that we're talking about a sea change in violence," said David Shirk, co-author of the
report and director of the Justice in Mexico Project, a U.S.-based initiative to protect human rights south of the border. "You still have elevated
levels of crime, so we still have a long way to go. But there
is improvement, and we have to acknowledge that
improvement and understand why it's happening so we can try to further it." The reduction in homicides does not mean Mexico has
completely solved its security problems. Maureen Meyer, senior associate for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Mexicans
still face extremely high levels of kidnappings, extortion and other violent crimes. American travelers have also been attacked. The U.S. State
Department issued a warning April 13 that said U.S. citizens continue to be victims of carjackings, robberies and other violent crimes. Meyer
said the
overall reduction in murders is an encouraging trend that allows Mexican officials time to cement
improvements in the judicial system, anti-corruption programs and police practices. She said the
government must "make sure that the space opened by having less violence leads to structural changes
to Mexico's institutions to guarantee a strong rule of law in the future."
Decriminalization would make the drug trade worse
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
Other scholars propose decriminalization as the answer.132 However, decriminalization would not have
the same effect on the market as legalization. In a decriminalized world, production and trafficking
would still be illegal, so there would still be the potential for high profits, yielding an incentive for selfhelp violence, and the drug trade would remain profitable for dangerous criminal organizations.
Additionally, under a decriminalization framework, countries would be faced with the same domestic
drug problems as legalization.
Drug crime decreases legitimacy of Mexican government – risks collapse
Thoumi et al. 10 (*Francisco E., expert at the Wilson Center, Ph.D., professor of economics and the
director of the Research and Minotiring Center on Drugs and Crime at Universidad el Rosario, former
research coordinator at the United National Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, **Raúl
Benitez, public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary
Research in Science and Humanities, professor and researcher at the North America Rsearch Center of
UNAM-Mexico, CNAS Senior Fellow, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Public Affairs and
Washington College of Law, Ph.D in Latin American Studies at UNAM, Master of International Affairs
from the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica, ***professor at the University of San Andrés,
Ph.D., University of Salvador, political science, Francine, professor of anthropology at the Central
University of Venezuela, political science degree, Friedrich, Ebert, and Stiftung Research, “The impact of
organized crime on Democratic Governance in Latin America”,
Organized crime is a growing problem worldwide. In
Latin America and the Caribbean groups of organized crime are
undermining the states capacity to govern . In- stitutions of the political system are undercut by the so called
» Narcos « or other non state actors. It is obvious that organized crime has adopted mechanisms of the globalized economy such as a high
degree of flexibility, the ability to quickly adjust to market changes and the use of socially weak segments of society for their means. While
organized crime gets more access to and through politics, already weakened states in Latin America are put
under serious pressure. The impact on recently democratized states like Mexico is severe . The role of or- ganized
crime in the erosion of democratic governance is marked by zones of fragile statehood, the undermin- ing of political institutions, the
replacement of social pol- icies by non state actors, the bribing of political actors and the illicit financing of political campaigns. But not only has
the existence of criminal activities cre- ated a threat to democratic governance . The repressive politics that
often respond to organized crime activities further create a spiral of mistrust, corruption and vio- lent reactions. High
levels of violence and public inse- curity often justify the popularity of zero tolerance ap- proaches: Politics of the »hard hand« such as in
Mexico and Colombia where the military is fighting in »a war on drugs«. These politics often produce human rights abus- es and thus further
undermine democratic forms of gov- ernance. The involvement of politicians and police forces or the military in illegal businesses further
undermine the trust of civil society into institutions of the state.
State failure destabilizes the globe – results in disease spread, nuclear terrorism, and
rogue nations – this guarantees nuclear war
TASC et al 03
(The Transnational Institute, The Center of Social Studies, Coimbra University, and The Peace Research Center – CIP-FUHEM, “Failed and
Collapsed States in the International System,” December, found at:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/failed/2003/12failedcollapsedstates.pdf)
In the malign scenario of global developments the number of collapsed states would grow
significantly. This would mean that several more countries in the world could not be held to
account for respecting international agreements in various fields, be it commercial transactions,
debt repayment, the possession and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the use of
the national territory for criminal or terrorist activities. The increase in failed states would
immediately lead to an increase in international migration, which could have a knock-on effect, first
in neighbouring countries which, having similar politico-economic structures, could suffer increased
destabilization and collapse as well. Developments in West Africa during the last decade may serve
as an example. Increased international migration would, secondly, have serious implications for the
Western world. In Europe it would put social relations between the population and immigrant
communities under further pressure, polarizing politics. An increase in collapsed states would also
endanger the security of Western states and societies. Health conditions could deteriorate as
contagious diseases like Ebola or Sars would spread because of a lack of measures taken in
collapsed areas. Weapons of mass destruction could come into the hands of various sorts of
political entities, be they terrorist groups, political factions in control of part of a collapsed state or
an aggressive political elite still in control of a national territory and intent on expansion. Not only
North Korea springs to mind; one could very well imagine such states in (North) Africa. Since the
multilateral system of control of such weapons would have ended in part because of the decision of
the United States to try and check their spread through unilateral action - a system that would
inherently be more unstable than a multilateral, negotiated regime - one could be faced with an
arms race that would sooner or later result in the actual use of these weapons. In the malign
scenario, relations between the US and Europe would also further deteriorate, in questions of a
military nature as well as trade relations, thus undercutting any possible consensus on stemming
the growth of collapsed states and the introduction of stable multilateral regimes towards matters
like terrorism, nuclear weapons and international migration. Disagreement is already rife on a host
of issues in these fields. At worst, even the Western members of the Westphalian system especially those bordering on countries in the former Third World, i.e. the European states - could
be faced with direct attacks on their national security.
Link Extensions
READ ONLY IF THEY SAY DEA IS CONTINUING SURVEILLANCE IN SQUO ON CASE OR
TAKE OUT THE CASE DEFENSE
DEA mass surveillance key to stopping cartels
Brad Heath, 4-8-2015, "U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades," USA TODAY,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/07/dea-bulk-telephone-surveillanceoperation/70808616/, Date Accessed 8/1/15, JL @ DDI
The DEA began assembling a data-gathering program in the 1980s as the government searched for new
ways to battle Colombian drug cartels. Neither informants nor undercover agents had been enough to
crack the cartels' infrastructure. So the agency's intelligence arm turned its attention to the groups'
communication networks. Calling records – often called "toll records" – offered one way to do that. Toll
records are comparable to what appears on a phone bill – the numbers a person dialed, the date and
time of the call, its duration and how it was paid for. By then, DEA agents had decades of experience
gathering toll records of people they suspected were linked to drug trafficking, albeit one person at a
time. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, officials said the agency had little way to make sense of the data
their agents accumulated and almost no ability to use them to ferret out new cartel connections. Some
agents used legal pads. "We were drowning in toll records," a former intelligence official said. The DEA
asked the Pentagon for help. The military responded with a pair of supercomputers and intelligence
analysts who had experience tracking the communication patterns of Soviet military units. "What they
discovered was that the incident of a communication was perhaps as important as the content of a
communication," a former Justice Department official said. The military installed the supercomputers on
the fifth floor of the DEA's headquarters, across from a shopping mall in Arlington, Va. The system they
built ultimately allowed the drug agency to stitch together huge collections of data to map trafficking
and money laundering networks both overseas and within the USA. It allowed agents to link the call
records its agents gathered domestically with calling data the DEA and intelligence agencies had
acquired outside the USA. (In some cases, officials said the DEA paid employees of foreign telecom firms
for copies of call logs and subscriber lists.) And it eventually allowed agents to cross-reference all of that
against investigative reports from the DEA, FBI and Customs Service.
I/L Extensions
Unchecked drug violence threatens Mexican government stability
Chase, 12 (Colonel David Chase of the US Army, graduated from the Army War College, in charge of strategy research on the Southern
border; “Military Police: Assisting in Securing the United States Southern Border”; 12/3/12; http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA561048) KD
In addition to negative economic effects the
drug war has an even more serious consequence – the direct threat to
the legitimacy of the Mexican government. Violence has created a condition of lawlessness in some parts of the country leading
to deteriorating social conditions and an inability for Mexico to police their side of the border. There is no doubt that DTO ideology is all about
profit; however their activities are successfully challenging the Mexican government and has raised serious
concerns about Mexico’s stability and ability to exercise sovereignty. President Calderon himself stated
that DTO initiated violence presented, “a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state.”13 This lack of control
is highlighted by several facts. One is that cartels are imposing their influence on local governments throughout the
country. A study prepared for the Mexican Senate entitled, “Municipal Government and Organized Crime” released in August 2010 found that
8% of all municipalities are completely under control of organized crime while a further 63% are infiltrated and influenced by organized
crime.14 Shockingly the study found these criminal
organizations often operated with logistical support from
corrupt municipal police and politicians.15 The same report also declared that DTOs have also exerted control over
local businesses. A further indication of the erosion of government legitimacy are recent opinion polls showing that public
support for the current Mexican government war on drugs is declining.
Terror DA
1NC Terror DA
Terror risk is high- maintaining current surveillance is key
Inserra, 6-8-2015
David Inserra is a Research Associate for Homeland Security and Cyber Security in the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute
for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation, 6-8-2015, "69th Islamist Terrorist
Plot: Ongoing Spike in Terrorism Should Force Congress to Finally Confront the Terrorist Threat,"
Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/06/69th-islamist-terrorist-plotongoing-spike-in-terrorism-should-force-congress-to-finally-confront-the-terrorist-threat
On June 2 in Boston, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim drew a knife and attacked police officers and FBI agents,
who then shot and killed him. Rahim was being watched by Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as he
had been plotting to behead police officers as part of violent jihad. A conspirator, David Wright or
Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq, was arrested shortly thereafter for helping Rahim to plan this attack. This
plot marks the 69th publicly known Islamist terrorist plot or attack against the U.S. homeland since 9/11,
and is part of a recent spike in terrorist activity. The U.S. must redouble its efforts to stop terrorists
before they strike, through the use of properly applied intelligence tools. The Plot According to the criminal
complaint filed against Wright, Rahim had originally planned to behead an individual outside the state of Massachusetts,[1] which, according to
news reports citing anonymous government officials, was Pamela Geller, the organizer of the “draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Garland,
Texas.[2] To this end, Rahim had purchased multiple knives, each over 1 foot long, from Amazon.com. The
FBI was listening in on
the calls between Rahim and Wright and recorded multiple conversations regarding how these weapons
would be used to behead someone. Rahim then changed his plan early on the morning of June 2. He planned to go “on vacation
right here in Massachusetts…. I’m just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue. Cause, ah, it’s the easiest target.”[3] Rahim and Wright
had used the phrase “going on vacation” repeatedly in their conversations as a euphemism for violent jihad. During this conversation, Rahim
told Wright that he planned to attack a police officer on June 2 or June 3. Wright then offered advice on preparing a will and destroying any
incriminating evidence. Based on this threat, Boston police officers and FBI agents approached Rahim to question him, which prompted him to
pull out one of his knives. After being told to drop his weapon, Rahim responded with “you drop yours” and moved toward the officers, who
then shot and killed him. While Rahim’s brother, Ibrahim, initially claimed that Rahim was shot in the back, video surveillance was shown to
community leaders and civil rights groups, who have confirmed that Rahim was not shot in the back.[4 ] Terrorism Not Going Away This
69th
Islamist plot is also the seventh in this calendar year. Details on how exactly Rahim was radicalized are still forthcoming,
but according to anonymous officials, online propaganda from ISIS and other radical Islamist groups are the
source.[5] That would make this attack the 58th homegrown terrorist plot and continue the recent trend
of ISIS playing an important role in radicalizing individuals in the United States. It is also the sixth plot or attack
targeting law enforcement in the U.S., with a recent uptick in plots aimed at police. While the debate over the PATRIOT Act and the USA
FREEDOM Act is taking a break, the terrorists are not. The result of the debate has been the reduction of U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism
capabilities, meaning that the U.S. has to do even more with less when it comes to connecting the dots on terrorist plots.[6]
Other
legitimate intelligence tools and capabilities must be leaned on now even more. Protecting the Homeland To
keep the U.S. safe, Congress must take a hard look at the U.S. counterterrorism enterprise and determine other measures that are needed to
improve it. Congress should: Emphasize community outreach. Federal grant funds should be used to create robust community-outreach
capabilities in higher-risk urban areas. These funds must not be used for political pork, or so broadly that they no longer target those
communities at greatest risk. Such capabilities are key to building trust within these communities, and if the United States is to thwart lone-wolf
terrorist attacks, it must place effective community outreach operations at the tip of the spear. Prioritize local cyber capabilities. Building cyberinvestigation capabilities in the higher-risk urban areas must become a primary focus of Department of Homeland Security grants. With so
much terrorism-related activity occurring on the Internet, local law enforcement must have the constitutional ability to monitor and track
violent extremist activity on the Web when reasonable suspicion exists to do so. Push the FBI toward being more effectively driven by
intelligence. While the FBI has made high-level changes to its mission and organizational structure, the bureau is still working on integrating
intelligence and law enforcement activities. Full integration will require overcoming inter-agency cultural barriers and providing FBI intelligence
personnel with resources, opportunities, and the stature they need to become a more effective and integral part of the FBI.
Maintain
essential counterterrorism tools. Support for important investigative tools is essential to maintaining the
security of the U.S. and combating terrorist threats. Legitimate government surveillance programs are
also a vital component of U.S. national security and should be allowed to continue. The need for
effective counterterrorism operations does not relieve the government of its obligation to follow the
law and respect individual privacy and liberty. In the American system, the government must do both
equally well. Clear-Eyed Vigilance The recent spike in terrorist plots and attacks should finally awaken
policymakers—all Americans, for that matter—to the seriousness of the terrorist threat. Neither fearmongering
nor willful blindness serves the United States. Congress must recognize and acknowledge the nature and
the scope of the Islamist terrorist threat, and take the appropriate action to confront it.
Surveillance is critical to stopping terror threats
Lewis 14 [James Andrew Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology and Public Policy Program
at the CSIS, December 2014, "Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate", Center for Strategic
and International Studies,
http://csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf pg 10-11 jf]
Assertions that a collection program contributes nothing because it has not singlehandedly prevented
an attack reflect an ill-informed understanding of how the United States conducts collection and analysis to prevent
harmful acts against itself and its allies. Intelligence does not work as it is portrayed in films—solitary agents do not make startling
discoveries that lead to dramatic, last-minute success (nor is technology consistently infallible). Intelligence is a team sport. Perfect
knowledge does not exist and success is the product of the efforts of teams of dedicated individuals from many
agencies, using many tools and techniques, working together to assemble fragments of data from many sources into a coherent picture.
Analysts assemble this mosaic from many different sources and based on experience and intuition. Luck is still more important than anyone
would like and the alternative to luck is acquiring more information. This ability to blend different sources of intelligence
has improved U.S. intelligence capabilities and gives us an advantage over some opponents. Portrayals of spying in popular culture focus on a
central narrative, essential for storytelling but deeply misleading. In practice, there can be many possible narratives that analysts must explore
simultaneously. An analyst might decide, for example, to see if there is additional confirming information that points to which explanation
deserves further investigation. Often, the contribution
from collection programs comes not from what they tell us,
but what they let us reject as false. In the case of the 215 program, its utility was in being able to provide information that
allowed analysts to rule out some theories and suspects. This allows analysts to focus on other, more likely,
scenarios. In one instance, an attack is detected and stopped before it could be executed. U.S. forces operating in Iraq
discover a bomb-making factory. Biometric data found in this factory is correlated with data from other bombings to provide partial
identification for several individuals who may be bomb-makers, none of whom are present in Iraq. In looking for these individuals, the United
States receives information from another intelligence service that one of the bombers might be living in a neighboring Middle Eastern country.
Using communications intercepts, the United States determines that the individual is working on a
powerful new weapon. The United States is able to combine the communications intercept from the known bomb maker with
information from other sources—battlefield data, information obtained by U.S. agents, collateral information from other nations’ intelligence
services—and
use this to identify others in the bomber’s network, understand the plans for bombing, and
identify the bomber’s target, a major city in the United States. This effort takes place over months and involves multiple
intelligence, law enforcement, and military agencies, with more than a dozen individuals from these agencies collaborating to build up a picture
of the bomb-maker and his planned attack. When the
bomb-maker leaves the Middle East to carry out his attack, he is prevented
from entering the United States. An analogy for how this works would be to take a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, randomly select 200
pieces, and provide them to a team of analysts who, using incomplete data, must guess what the entire picture looks like. The likelihood
of their success is determined by how much information they receive, how much time they have, and by experience
and luck. Their guess can be tested by using a range of collection programs, including communications surveillance
programs like the 215 metadata program. What is left out of this picture (and from most fictional portrayals of intelligence analysis) is
the number of false leads the analysts must pursue, the number of dead ends they must walk down, and the tools they use to decide that
something is a false lead or dead end. Police officers are familiar with how many leads in an investigation must be eliminated through legwork
and query before an accurate picture emerges. Most leads are wrong, and much of the work is a process of elimination that eventually focuses
in on the most probable threat. If real intelligence work were a film, it would be mostly boring.
contributes is in eliminating possible leads and suspects.
Where the metadata program
This makes the critique
of the 215 program like a
critique of airbags in a car—you own a car for years, the airbags never deploy, so therefore they are useless and can be removed. The
weakness in this argument is that discarding airbags would increase risk. How much risk would increase and whether other
considerations outweigh this increased risk are fundamental problems for assessing surveillance programs. With the Section 215 program,
Americans gave up a portion of their privacy in exchange for decreased risk. Eliminating
215 collection is like subtracting a few of the
random pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. It decreases the chances that the analysts will be able to deduce what is
actually going on and may increase the time it takes to do this. That means there is an increase in the risk of a successful
attack. How much of an increase in risk is difficult to determine.
Terrorists will use bioweapons- guarantees extinction
Cooper 13
(Joshua, 1/23/13, University of South Carolina, “Bioterrorism and the Fermi Paradox,”
http://people.math.sc.edu/cooper/fermi.pdf, 7/15/15, SM)
We may conclude that, when a civilization reaches its space-faring age, it∂ will more or less at the same moment (1) contain
many
individuals who seek to cause large-scale destruction, and (2) acquire the capacity to tinker with its own
genetic chemistry. This is a perfect recipe for bioterrorism, and, given the many very natural pathways
for its development and the overwhelming∂ evidence that precisely this course has been taken by
humanity, it is hard to∂ see how bioterrorism does not provide a neat, if profoundly unsettling, solution∂ to Fermi’s paradox. One might
object that, if omnicidal individuals are∂ successful in releasing highly virulent and deadly genetic malware into
the∂ wild, they are still unlikely to succeed in killing everyone. However, even if∂ every such mass death event results only in
a high (i.e., not total) kill rate and∂ there is a large gap between each such event (so that individuals can
build up∂ the requisite scientific infrastructure again), extinction would be inevitable∂ regardless. Some of
the engineered bioweapons will be more successful than∂ others; the inter-apocalyptic eras will vary in length; and post-apocalyptic∂
environments may be so war-torn, disease-stricken, and impoverished of genetic variation that they
may culminate in true extinction events even if the initial cataclysm ‘only’ results in 90% death rates,
since they may cause the∂ effective population size to dip below the so-called “minimum viable
population.”∂ This author ran a Monte Carlo simulation using as (admittedly very∂ crude and poorly informed, though arguably
conservative) estimates the following∂ Earth-like parameters: bioterrorism event mean death rate 50% and∂ standard deviation 25% (beta
distribution), initial population 1010, minimum∂ viable population 4000, individual omnicidal act probability 10−7 per annum,∂ and population
growth rate 2% per annum. One thousand trials yielded an∂ average post-space-age time until extinction of less than 8000 years. This is∂
essentially instantaneous on a cosmological scale, and varying the parameters∂ by quite a bit does nothing to make the survival period
comparable with the∂ age of the universe.
Link Extensions
1. Extend the 1NC Metadata Link- the NSA metadata surveillance that the aff stops is
key to stopping terrorists by identifying entire terrorist networks
2. The Border Link - Border surveillance is key to preventing terrorism, the aff’s
curtailment of drug surveillance precludes this
Smarick et al. 12 ,( Kathleen Smarick and Gary D. LaFree of the National Consortium for the Study of
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. 11/12 “Border Crossings and
Terrorist Attacks in the United States: Lessons for Protecting against Dangerous Entrants” START,
http://www.start.umd.edu/sites/default/files/files/publications/START_BorderCrossingsTerroristAttacks
.pdf CCC)
An essential step in this project was determining the frequency and dynamics of border crossings by
individuals who conducted or who wanted to conduct terrorism-related activities in the United
States . Towards that goal, the project built upon the existing holdings of the American Terrorism Study
(ATS) in this effort. The ATS, housed at the University of Arkansas, catalogs and systematically codes
information on more than 300 Federal court cases involving Federal terrorist charges since 1980 and,
following a review of other possible resources, proved to be the most useful starting point for
compiling open-source, quantitative data on terrorist border crossings. Since 1989, the American
Terrorism Study (ATS) has received lists of court cases and associated indictees that resulted from an
official FBI terrorism investigation spanning 1980 through 2004. Housed at the University of Arkansas’
Terrorism Research Center in Fulbright College (TRC), the ATS now includes almost 400 cases from the
FBI lists. Of these, approximately 75% of cases have complete court documentation, and almost all of
those collected have been coded into the ATS database, while the ATS team continues to track new
cases by collecting, reviewing, and coding new and additional court documentation. The ATS includes
terrorism incidents and attacks, thwarted or planned terrorism incidents sometimes referred to as
preventions, material support cases for terrorism, general terrorism conspiracies, and in some cases,
immigration fraud; the common denominator among all ATS events is that the FBI investigated these
events as terrorism-related incidents. During preliminary research for this project, court records from
378 terrorism cases found in the ATS dataset were reviewed for information on potential border
crossing events related to terrorism cases. The documents for each court case were manually reviewed
by researchers to determine whether the collected records reported that one of the defendants or
accomplices in a case crossed a U.S. border at some point. Thirty-eight percent of the reviewed cases—
145 cases—from 1980 through 2004 were found to either have: • direct mention of a border crossing
in the court documents, or • a link to a terrorism incident that involved a known border crossing,
either before or after an incident. After compiling this list of court cases for inclusion, each identified
court case was then linked to a criminal incident involving terrorism charges. Initial reviews revealed
a connection to a border-crossing event in a total of 58 successful terrorist attacks, 51 prevented or
thwarted attacks, 26 material support cases, 33 immigration fraud incidents, and 4 general terrorism
conspiracies . Additional reviews of relevant information on indictees and their activities resulted in a
reduction in the number of successful terrorist attacks associated with these individuals to a total of 43.
Appendix 2 provides more details on the data collection process and how a reliable collection
methodology was established to create the U.S. Terrorist Border Crossing Dataset (USTBC), using the
ATS as a starting point. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A
Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Center of Excellence Border Crossings and
Terrorist Attacks in the United States 12 Systematic evaluation by the research team revealed that the
American Terrorism Study is a reliable and useful resource for identifying individuals associated with
terrorist attacks or terrorist criminal cases (such as conspiracies) and for determining which of these
individuals crossed U.S. borders in advance of or in the wake of their terrorism-related behavior. This is
largely because the ATS is based on court documents, which among sources of data on terrorism are the
most likely to reference relevant border crossing activity. The Global Terrorism Database, which is based
primarily on media sources, can serve a supporting role in this research, but the ATS is the primary
source allowing for construction of a new, relational database on U.S. Terrorist Border Crossings
(USTBCs). That being said, it is important to recognize that the ATS is not a perfect data source. As noted
above, its contents are limited to individuals and information related to court cases in which one or
more defendant was charged with Federal terrorism charges. As such, the contents of ATS clearly
represent a subset of all terrorists or attempted terrorists in the United States, as it systematically omits
those who:  were never arrested or faced any charges,  were charged with offenses not directly
related to terrorism,  were charged at the non-Federal level, or  were engaged in dangerous activity
that does not meet the FBI’s definition of a terrorism case. Throughout this project, the research team
was careful to respect the limitations of this data collection and to draw conclusions that recognize that
the border crossing events included in this project likely represent a non-representative subset of all
border crossing attempts by terrorists or intended terrorists. Despite these limitations, though, the data
that was built upon the baseline of ATS provides important insights into the nexus between border
crossings and terrorism. The U.S. Terrorism Border Crossing Dataset The final versions of the codebooks
used to develop the U.S. Terrorist Border Crossing (USTBC) data collection are presented in Appendix 3.
Based upon knowledge gained from pilot efforts (as discussed above and in Appendix 2), the project
resulted in two codebooks—one focused on dynamics of a bordercrossing event involving someone
associated with a Federal terrorism court case, and another focused on the characteristics of the
individuals associated with Federal charges who were involved in the bordercrossing event. Data
collection for the USTBC lasted for approximately one year and was primarily conducted by research
assistants at the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas.3 The resultant data that
comprise the USTBC are available in Appendix 4. Table 4 provides a snapshot summary of these data,
which include detailed information on the location of an attempted crossing, the timing of a crossing
relative to attempted or actual terrorist activity, the origin or destination of an attempted crossing, and
more. The data also include specific information on border crossers, including their citizenship status,
their criminal history, and key demographics (including level of education, marital status, etc.) Appendix
5 provides descriptive statistics from the border-crossing and border-crosser data. 3 Special thanks to
Kim Murray and Summer Jackson of the Terrorism Research Center for their efforts in combing through
the courtcase material and assembling these data for the USTBC. National Consortium for the Study of
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology
Center of Excellence Border Crossings and Terrorist Attacks in the United States 13 Border Crossings
Identified in USTBC Attempts to Enter the United States Of the 221 border crossings identified in this
project as involving individuals who were indicted by the U.S. government in terrorism-related cases, the
majority (129 crossings) involved an individual attempting to enter the United States, while the
remainder (92 crossings) involved an individual attempting to exit the United States. Eighty-seven
percent of the attempted border crossings were successful, rather than being thwarted by law
enforcement or foiled by some other events or developments. Additional discussion on the nature of
successful crossings versus those who were apprehended at the border is presented below. Among
those attempts to enter the United States, the most frequent origin for these crossing efforts was
Canada.4 But, as Figure 2 illustrates, such attempted entries originated from all corners of the world.
(And, more evidence, Border surveillance prevents terrorist groups from attempting
attacks)
Willis et al 10 [Henry H. Willis, 2010, director of the RAND Homeland Security and Defense Center,
with Joel B. Predd, Paul K. Davis and Wayne P. Brown, RAND.org,
“Measuring the Effectiveness of Border Security Between Ports-of-Entry”,
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2010/RAND_TR837.pdf, pg 19, jf]
The principal contributions that border
security makes to counterterrorism relate to preventing certain kinds of terrorist attacks
dependent on flows into the country of people or materials. These contributions can be illustrated by considering what
opportunities exist to disrupt terrorist attacks while they are being planned and orchestrated. Through a number of planning efforts, DHS
and its components have developed detailed planning scenarios of terrorist events (DHS, 2006). Each of
these scenarios has been deconstructed into attack trees that are useful for considering how DHS
border-security programs contribute to terrorism security efforts. In their most generic form, these attack trees
specify dimensions of attack scenarios with respect to building the terrorist team, identifying a target, and acquiring a weapon (see Figure 4.1).
This decomposition of attack planning provides a structure around which to consider how interdiction, deterrence, and networked intelligence
contribute to preventing terrorist attacks and, thus, why it is relevant to measure these functions. DHS
border-security eff orts
focus on interdiction of terrorist team members and weapons or weapon components when they
cross U.S. borders. Examples of initiatives that are intended to enhance these capabilities include the Secure Border Initiative, the
acquisition of Advanced Spectroscopic Portals for nuclear detection, the Secure Communities Initiative, and US-VISIT. In addition, it is often
pointed out that, when
border-security measures are perceived to be effective, terrorists groups may be
deterred from attacking in particular ways, or possibly from attacking at all. This could result from awareness of
what type of surveillance is occurring or the capability of interdiction systems. In either case, deterrence refers to the judgment
of terrorists that they will not be successful, leading them to choose another course of action. Finally, many bordersecurity initiatives also contribute information to the national networked-intelligence picture. For
example, the Secure Communities Initiative has implemented new capabilities to allow a single submission of fingerprints as part of the normal
criminal arrest and booking process to be queried against both the FBI and DHS immigration and terrorism databases. This effort makes it easier
for federal and local law enforcement to share actionable intelligence and makes it more difficult for terrorists to evade border-security efforts.
I-Law DA
1NC I-Law DA
Uniqueness and Link - The US is in a unique position in the international community,
breaking treaties ruins reciprocity
Bennett and Walsh, 2014
(Wells Bennett, Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution and Managing Editor of
Lawfare, and John Walsh, Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), focused
on drug policy reforms that protect human rights, public health and public safety, October 2014,
“Marijuana Legalization is an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties”, Center for
Effective Public Management at Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/10/15-marijuana-legalizationmodernize-drug-treaties-bennett-walsh/cepmmjlegalizationv4.pdf, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
Having that scenario in mind, we lastly emphasize the United States’ unique relationship both to the
drug treaties and to the wider international community. The United States was a—if not the—key
protagonist in developing the 1961, 1971, and 1988 Conventions, as well as the 1972 protocol amending
the 1961 Convention; the United States has for decades been widely and correctly viewed as the
treaties’ chief champion and defender.40 That fact feeds back onto this one: The United States also
occupies a singular place in international relations. It can summon powers no other nation can summon,
but it also confronts risks no other nation confronts.41 For that oft-cited reason, the United States has a
profound interest in ensuring that counterparties perform their treaty obligations. Reciprocity is always
a big deal for any nation that trades promises with other ones—but it is perhaps uniquely so for ours.
These factors mean that caution is in order regarding international law and the viability of the Cole
Memo in the longer run. If the United States can “flexibly interpret” the drug treaties with regard to
marijuana, then Mexico is entitled to no less—though it might view the limits of its flexibility differently,
or apply it to another controlled substance within the treaties’ purview. Or imagine that a foreign
nation’s controversial policy butts up against seemingly contrary language, in a treaty covering an
extremely important global issue other than drug control. Likely the United States will have a tougher
time objecting when, rather than conceding the problem or changing course, that nation’s foreign
ministry invokes the need to “tolera[te] different national approaches;” or recasts the relevant treaty as
a “living document” subject to periodic, unilateral reinterpretation.
Impact - International law is key to solving conflict, terrorism, human rights, poverty,
disease and the environment
O’Connell, 2008, The Power & Purpose of International Law, [Research Professor of International
Dispute Resolution at the Kroc Institute and the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at Notre
Dame; Mary Ellen], p.14
It is perhaps not surprising that just at this time a new attempt to undermine the authority of international law has appeared in the form of The
Limits of International Law, but if the authors of this and other attacks
on international law believe they are acting in the
interest of the United States, or any state, they are mistaken. Given the nature of the problems we face in the world,
undermining any tool for the maintenance of peace and stability could not be further from any nation’s
interest. There is a long, proud and continuing history of US support for international law and the common pursuit of global norms. There is
no reason to abandon that tradition now, and every reason to redouble our commitment. Even Goldsmith and Posner seem to think that having
some rules, like bilateral trade rules, is valuable. Yet, the
only way to have viable international law rules on trade, as
already mentioned, is
through a general system of international law—with theories of obligation, sources, and processes of
application and enforcement. Any effort to weaken international law only serves to undermine the prospects for
achieving an orderly world and progress toward fulfillment of humanity’s shared goals, including
prosperity. The rational and moral choice today is to understand how international law actually works and how it can be made to work
better. International law has deficits, yet it persists as the single, generally accepted means to solve the world’s
problems. It is not religion or ideology that the world has in common, but international law. Through international law, diverse
cultures can reach consensus about the moral norms that we will commonly live by. As a result,
international law is uniquely suited to mitigate the problems of armed conflict, terrorism, human rights
abuse, poverty, disease, and the destruction of the natural environment. It is the closest thing we have to a neutral
vehicle for taking on the world’s most complex issues and pressing problems.
Uniqueness (most link ev is spec enough to have uniqueness on its
own)
Link Extension
Decriminalization and legalization violate international law
Reuters Editorial, 11-12-2014, "U.S. states' pot legalization not in line with international law: U.N.
agency," Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-usa-drugs-unidUSKCN0IW1GV20141112, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI
Moves by some U.S. states to legalize marijuana are not in line with international drugs conventions, the
U.N. anti-narcotics chief said on Wednesday, adding he would discuss the issue in Washington next
week. Residents of Oregon, Alaska, and the U.S. capital voted this month to allow the use of marijuana,
boosting the legalization movement as cannabis usage is increasingly recognized by the American
mainstream. "I don't see how (the new laws) can be compatible with existing conventions," Yury
Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told reporters.
Asked whether there was anything the UNODC could do about it, Fedotov said he would raise the
problem next week with the U.S. State Department and other U.N. agencies. The Oregon and Alaska
steps would legalize recreational cannabis use and usher in a network of shops similar to those
operating in Washington state and Colorado, which in 2012 voted to become the first U.S. states to
allow marijuana use for fun. Marijuana remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law,
although the Obama administration has said it was giving individual states leeway to carry out their own
recreational-use statutes.
Stopping the surveillance of drugs violates international law **be careful the CP
probably links harder to this card**
Bennett and Walsh, 2014
(Wells Bennett, Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution and Managing Editor of
Lawfare, and John Walsh, Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), focused
on drug policy reforms that protect human rights, public health and public safety, October 2014,
“Marijuana Legalization is an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties”, Center for
Effective Public Management at Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/10/15-marijuana-legalizationmodernize-drug-treaties-bennett-walsh/cepmmjlegalizationv4.pdf, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
Marijuana counts as a “drug” for purposes of this language, the interpretation of which depends in part
upon the “subject to the provisions” phrase. We thus must look elsewhere in the 1961 Convention to
get a sense of how parties must handle drugs like marijuana. Article 36, paragraph one, discusses “penal
provisions.” Here, subject in part to their “constitutional limitations,”35 parties are required to take
steps necessary to make (among other things) the cultivation, sale, purchase, and possession of drugs
contrary to the 1961 Convention’s provisions into “punishable offenses.” The 1988 Convention is more
explicit. Its third article requires signatories to “establish as criminal offences under [their] domestic
law” the growing, buying, selling or possessing of drugs including marijuana, contrary to the provisions
of the 1961 Convention.36 This and similar provisions drive home the point: the drug treaties together
countenance medical and scientific uses, but disapprove of nearly all others. And they plainly obligate
signatories to enact laws punishing participants in recreational marijuana markets. The CSA does just
that, of course, but under the Cole Memo, the statute seemingly will not be enforced against certain
persons, who participate in sufficiently rigorous state regulatory schemes allowing for the production,
sale, purchase, or possession of recreational marijuana. It is true that the treaties build in policy
latitude—but we think even that only goes so far. For example, the 1961 Convention doesn’t block
parties from allocating enforcement resources. And it says that when “abusers” of drugs commit
Convention offenses, states may then provide, as alternatives to conviction or punishment, for certain
treatment or rehabilitation measures.37 But this latter arrangement (and similar ones contemplated by
related provisions in the drug treaties) most naturally applies to people seeking help to quit marijuana,
not to recreational users seeking enjoyment or commercial growers and state regulators seeking
revenue. It is one thing to stay enforcement’s hand, and instead to invoke alternatives to incarceration;
but it is quite another to announce, in so many words, a qualified tolerance of the cultivation, sale,
purchase and possession of marijuana, within the confines of a strictly regulated but still legalized
market. This brings us to the prosecutorial discretion—something the 1961 Convention didn’t take on
specifically, but that the 1988 Convention did. As noted above, the following words from the latter
treaty may have informed Assistant Secretary Brownfield’s appeal to “policy flexibility,” with regard to
Washington and Colorado and the United States’ enforcement priorities: The Parties shall endeavour to
ensure that any discretionary legal powers under their domestic law relating to the prosecution of
persons for offences established in accordance with this article are exercised to maximize the
effectiveness of law enforcement measures in respect of those offences, and with due regard to the
need to deter the commission of such offences. Note the qualification. The decision not to prosecute an
otherwise clear-cut marijuana offense cannot be made willy-nilly, but instead should “maximize” the
effect of law enforcement activities “in respect” of that offense; the goal of deterrence should be kept in
mind, too. The relationship between the two quoted phrases is somewhat hard to parse, though it
certainly encompasses at least some authority to allocate resources or set enforcement priorities—
much as Brownfield has claimed. Even so, we fail to see how the Cole Memo policy would deter anyone,
per the treaty requirements, from growing, selling, buying or possessing marijuana for recreational
purposes;38 the memo essentially explains how Coloradans and Washingtonians (and adult visitors to
those states) can engage in that very conduct without facing federal prosecution. Wherever the limits of
the United States’ enforcement discretion under the drug treaties might be drawn precisely, we know
that such discretion by definition cannot be an across-the-board, categorical affair, when the issue is
federal tolerance of regulated, comprehensive marijuana markets established by state law. And that’s
just it: if more states take a legalize-and-regulate approach, a federal-level decision not to prosecute
similarly situated persons could start to look like blanket non-enforcement of implementing legislation—
something that, in our view, the drug treaties do not contemplate.
Decriminalizing drugs violates treaties, collapses entire system
Bewley-Taylor, 2002
(David R., Department of American Studies, University of Wales Swansea, “Challenging the UN drug
control conventions: problems and Possibilities”, International Journal of Drug Policy 14 (2003) 171/179,
December 1, 2002, http://www.unawestminster.org.uk/pdf/drugs/UNdrugsBewley_Taylor_IJDP14.pdf,
Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
Another strategy would be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties or certain parts of them. In this way
they could institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example the
legalisation of cannabis and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. This option
has been gaining support amongst many opponents of the prohibition based international system for
some time. Disregarding all or selected components of the treaties, however, raises serious issues
beyond the realm of drug control. The possibility of nations unilaterally ignoring drug control treaty
commitments could threaten the stability of the entire treaty system. As a consequence states may be
wary of opting out. Some international lawyers argue that all treaties can naturally cease to be binding
when a fundamental change of circumstances has occurred since the time of signing (Starke, 1989, pp.
473/474). Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in the nature and extent of the drug problem since the
1960s, this doctrine of rebus sic stantibus could probably be applied to the drug treaties. Yet the
selective application of such a principle would call into question the validity of many and varied
conventions.
Other international treaties stand to fail if the US contravenes drug policies
Bennett and Walsh, 2014
(Wells Bennett, Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution and Managing Editor of
Lawfare, and John Walsh, Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), focused
on drug policy reforms that protect human rights, public health and public safety, October 2014,
“Marijuana Legalization is an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties”, Center for
Effective Public Management at Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/10/15-marijuana-legalizationmodernize-drug-treaties-bennett-walsh/cepmmjlegalizationv4.pdf, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
**the INCB = The International Narcotics Control Board
The prospect of future marijuana regulation raises a second, more fundamental reason to rethink things:
the nation’s experiment with legalizing and regulating marijuana might actually go well. Suppose
Colorado and Washington both operate their regulated marijuana markets smartly, without offending
federal enforcement prerogatives, and—most importantly— without compromising public health and
safety. We don’t think this is a fanciful or improbable scenario. Our Brookings colleague John Hudak was
the first to examine Colorado’s implementation effort up close. And he tentatively concluded that so far,
the state’s initial rollout has been imperfect but quite effective.39 If this path continues or even bends
towards improvement, then other states may soon elect to follow Washington and Colorado’s lead. And
that, in turn, stands to exacerbate an already visible tension between obligations imposed by the drug
treaties, and the federal government’s enforcement posture towards legalizing states. To put the point
another way, if Colorado and Washington augur a real trend, then the costs to the United States of
treaty breach could be swiftly ratcheted upwards. The INCB could raise the volume and severity of its
criticisms; we wouldn’t be surprised to hear protests from more prohibitionist countries about the
United States’ treaty compliance, or to see other nations start pushing the limits of other no less
important treaties to which the United States is party. When some or all of this happens, the United
States won’t get very far in emphasizing the CSA’s theoretical application nationwide, subject to
enforcement priorities enunciated in the Cole Memo; or in appealing to larger objectives woven
throughout the drug treaties, and their conferral of policy flexibility. What if twenty or thirty states
successfully establish, and police, regulated markets for marijuana production and sale?
Not prosecuting drug crimes will break international law and risk the breaking of other
treaties
Bennett and Walsh, 2014
(Wells Bennett, Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution and Managing Editor of
Lawfare, and John Walsh, Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), focused
on drug policy reforms that protect human rights, public health and public safety, October 2014,
“Marijuana Legalization is an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties”, Center for
Effective Public Management at Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/10/15-marijuana-legalizationmodernize-drug-treaties-bennett-walsh/cepmmjlegalizationv4.pdf, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
If indeed Colorado and Washington do presage fundamental changes in U.S. marijuana law and policy,
then the United States’ stance regarding its drug-control treaty obligations will need to measure up to
the requirements of international law. The U.S. assertion of its treaty compliance on the basis of
“flexible interpretation” can be questioned. The International Narcotics Control Board (“INCB” or the
“Board”)—a body charged with monitoring drug-treaty compliance and assisting governments in
upholding their obligations—has already made clear its view that the United States is now in
contravention.9 If more U.S. states opt to legalize marijuana, the gap between the facts on the ground in
the United States and the treaties’ proscriptions will become ever wider. The greater the gap, the
greater the risk of sharper condemnation from the INCB; criticism or remedial action by drug-treaty
partners and other nations; and rebukes (or, worse, shrugs) from countries that the United States seeks
to call out for violating the drug treaties or other international agreements. It is a path the United
States—with its strong interest in international institutions and the rule of law—should tread with great
caution.
Impact Extension
Strengthening international law is key to solving global problems—trashing it harms
everyone
O’Connell, 2008, The Power & Purpose of International Law, [Research Professor of
International Dispute Resolution at the Kroc Institute and the Robert and Marion
Short Professor of Law at Notre Dame; Mary Ellen], p. 370
International law needs improvement. The new work being done in the areas of natural law and process law theory—and even in
rational choice analysis—can improve the system. International law needs improvement, however, not demolition, because it
remains the single, generally accepted means to solve the world’s problems. These problems will not be solved by
armed conflict or the imposition of a single ideology or religion. Through international law diverse cultures can reach
consensus about the moral norms that we should commonly live by. People everywhere believe in law, believe in this
alternative to force, as they believe in higher things. They want the power of law to be used to achieve the community’s most important
common goals. International law
reflects that the international community’s shared goals today are peace,
respect for human rights, prosperity, and the protection of the natural environment. Understanding what
international law really is and what it is about and promoting acceptance of it should enhance its authority and, thereby, its power to achieve
these goals on behalf of us all.
International law & cooperation is key to preventing terrorism
Cortright, 2012, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Winning Without War:
Nonmilitary Strategies for Overcoming Violent Extremism, Spring, [ Director of Policy
Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre
Dame; David], p. 215
The alternative to a militarized strategy against terrorism is not inaction or acquiescence; instead, the strategy should focus on the
development of rigorous programs for international cooperation in identifying and suppressing criminal conspiracies and ameliorating the
conditions and grievances that give rise to terrorism. John Ikenberry
argues that the struggle against terrorism must be
based on alliance partnerships and international cooperation, which "entails intelligence, sanctions,
diplomacy, financial regulation, development aid, and a multitude of other ongoing efforts - all of which
require extensive multilateral cooperation." Security protections are part of the equation, but they must be subordinate to
political, economic and social policies that address the root causes of violent extremism. The United States and the international community
need a more comprehensive and holistic strategy that balances security concerns with the defense of human rights and prioritizes economic
development, good governance programs, conflict transformation, and support for the rule of law.
Because al-Qaida's terrorist
threat is global in nature, the strategies employed against it must be transnational. Every nation shares a
common interest in eliminating the scourge of global terrorism and in working with other nations to eliminate the threat posed by al-Qaida and
its associated groups. A broadly collaborative effort involving virtually every nation on earth is necessary to counter this terror threat that is
spreading across dozens of countries and that can emerge among self-starter groups.
The most effective tools in this fight are
not unilateral but cooperative. International law, multilateral institutions, and collaborative action are
the essential ingredients of a winning strategy against global terrorism.
DA Turns Case
International law key to solving racial and gender discrimination
Joyner, 2005, International Law in the 21st Century, [Georgetown professor of
government; Christopher], p. 4-5
Absent standards of international morality, international
law could not exist. Many of its principles—for example, respect for treaties,
conditions essential to friendly and stable state relations. Though
sometimes used as pretexts, various ideas and sentiments of humanitarian concern constitute the real motives for
certain international law—for instance, the legal rules regulating the laws of armed conflict; treatment
of prisoners of war; and prohibitions against crimes against humanity, genocide, and acts of torture. While
nonintervention, good neighborliness—remain
international law might be predicated on a sense of justice and equity, international morality is not synonymous with international law. Still,
during the last half of the 20th century, the former moved closer to the latter as numerous international
agreements were promulgated concerning the protection of innocent persons and respect for their
human rights and personal dignity. These agreements might include the various conventions negotiated in
recent decades to condemn and prohibit racial discrimination and apartheid discrimination against
women, mistreatment of children, and the abrogation of civil and political rights.
A2 Violated I-Law in the Past
Even though there have been past violations, the US federal government attempted to
correct them; the plan’s policy is unprecedented **be careful with this card the
authors personally agree with the Obama administration’s stance, doesn’t take out
impact though**
Bennett and Walsh, 2014
(Wells Bennett, Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution and Managing Editor of
Lawfare, and John Walsh, Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), focused
on drug policy reforms that protect human rights, public health and public safety, October 2014,
“Marijuana Legalization is an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties”, Center for
Effective Public Management at Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/10/15-marijuana-legalizationmodernize-drug-treaties-bennett-walsh/cepmmjlegalizationv4.pdf, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI)
This is not to suggest that compliance challenges or complexity should always trigger a call to reshape
the United States’ treaty commitments. Practice and prudence both support a more nuanced, casespecific approach than that. Sometimes the United States has sought to make significant adjustments to
multilateral frameworks or even quit them; other times, the United States has weighed costs and
benefits, and pressed on within the treaty despite consequential breaches—in situations much more
obvious (and less open to reasonable contention) than that regarding marijuana. But in those instances,
the United States’ compliance failures often have come despite some hard striving by the federal
government. The State Department, to name one well known example, tries mightily to make state law
enforcement officers aware of the United States’ obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular
Relations—notwithstanding some repeated and well-known violations of that treaty by the likes of
Texas, Virginia, and Arizona.42 In this case, though, no external factors—federalism, say, or a contrary
ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court—have frustrated a strong push by the executive branch to vindicate
the drug treaties; the decision not to assert federal supremacy was in fact taken unilaterally by the
Obama administration. Given the circumstances, we believe it was the correct decision. The Cole Memo
nevertheless establishes at least some friction with a treaty obligation, by holding back on CSA
enforcement, so as to accommodate state-level regulation of marijuana. Again, the reasons why are
entirely understandable: given the incipient nature of the changes to which the Cole Memo was
reacting, the United States essentially opted to take a wait-and-see approach as to how problematic the
treaty questions might become. So far as we are aware, this strategy is without precedent in U.S. treaty
practice. The United States should approach it carefully and deliberatively, given the country’s outsized
interest in reciprocal performance of treaty obligations. That depends in part on being able to credibly
call out other nations for treaty failings—something which in turn depends on strictly performing our
own obligations, or at least making a good show of trying hard to do so before coming up short.
A2 Guantanamo Violates I-Law
Obama has already fought to close Guantanamo Bay and his plan is almost finalized
Toluse Olorunnipa, 7-22-2015, "Obama's Guantanamo Prison Closing Plan in Final Drafting, Earnest
Says," Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-22/guantanamo-prisonclosing-plan-in-final-drafting-earnest-says, Date Accessed 7/26/15, JL @ DDI
The Obama administration is nearing completion of a plan to close the U.S. military prison at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that it will then send to Congress, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest
said. The plan will shutter the facility in a safe and responsible way, Earnest told reporters on
Wednesday. President Barack Obama, who leaves office in less than 18 months, has battled for years
with lawmakers over his pledge to close Guantanamo by bringing to trial some detainees and holding
others in the U.S. as prisoners of war, while arranging to send the least dangerous ones home or to third
countries. In recent months, the administration has sent several detainees from Guantanamo to
countries including Oman and Qatar, and the U.S. is seeking additional options for transferring more
prisoners, Earnest said at the White House.
Case
Solvency
1NC Solvency Frontline
1. Unregulated drugs would cause worse problems than the status quo
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
V. The Next Step: Government Regulation
Eradicating the violence associated with drug trafficking is only the first step in successfully containing
the global drug problem. After universal legalization one could argue especially after universal
legalization drug use and abuse problems would still be prevalent. Drug trafficking violence would
subside as the new laws affect the global market, but each nation would still face its own domestic drug
problem. Without additional governmental action, legalization could lead to a variety of problems.
Manufacturers could produce drugs in more dangerous forms. Street gangs could distribute the drugs
legally and then use the profits for other violent activities. Also, consumption in public places and by
minors could become prevalent.
2. (BE CAREFUL if you want to read this you can’t read the extensions on DA link)
The DEA has already been forced to end its collection of metadata
Drug Policy, 6-3-2015, "Congress Votes to End DEA's Invasive Bulk Data Collection Program and
Slashes Agency's Budget," Drug Policy, http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2015/06/congress-votes-enddeas-invasive-bulk-data-collection-program-and-slashes-agencys-budge, Date Accessed 8/1/15, JL @ DDI
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Legislators voted
by a simple voice vote last night to end the DEA’s controversial bulk
data collection programs, as part of the U.S. House of Representatives' consideration of the Fiscal Year 2016 Commerce, Justice, and
Science Appropriations bill. The House also passed three amendments that cut $23 million from the DEA’s
budget, and shifted it to fighting child abuse, processing rape test kits, reducing the deficit, and paying for body cameras on police officers to
reduce law enforcement abuses. Representatives debated four amendments to prohibit the DEA and Justice Department from undermining
state marijuana laws -- and those votes will happen later today. “Congress
dealt a major blow to the DEA by ending their
invasive and offensive bulk data collection programs and by cutting their budget, said Bill Piper, director of national affairs
for the Drug Policy Alliance. “The more the DEA ignores commonsense drug policy, the more they will see their agency’s power and budget
come under deeper scrutiny.” Three amendments cutting the DEA’s budget passed by voice vote. Rep. Ted Liew's (D-CA) amendment shifted $9
million from the DEA’s failed Cannabis Reduction and Eradication program to the VAWA Consolidated Youth Oriented Program ($4 million),
Victims of Child Abuse Act ($3 million), and deficit reduction ($2 million). Rep. Steve Cohen’s (D-TN) amendment shifted $4 million from the
DEA to a program to reduce the nation’s backlog in processing of rape test kits. Rep. Joaquin Castro’s (D-TX) amendment shifted $9 million from
the DEA to body cameras for police officers to reduce police abuse. Last night the
House also adopted an amendment
preventing DEA and DOJ from using federal funds to engage in bulk collection of Americans'
communications records. It was offered by Representatives Jared Polis (D-CO), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), David Schweikert (R-AZ), and
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).
3. Without stopping other racist practices like stop and frisk, the aff cannot solve
their impacts
4. The DEA would circumvent surveillance limitations- parallel construction
Nick Wing, writer for the Huffington Post, 10-24-2014, "The DEA Once Turned A 14-Year-Old Into A
Drug Kingpin. Welcome To The War On Drugs," Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/24/dea-war-on-drugs_n_6030920.html, Date Accessed
7/26/15, JL @ DDI
And the DEA instructs agents not to tell the truth about sources of key intelligence. A Reuters report,
also from 2013, detailed how the DEA's Special Operations Division, or SOD, teaches agents to cover up
vital tips that come from the department. A DEA document obtained by Reuters shows that federal
agents are trained in "parallel construction," in which essential intelligence obtained SOD wiretaps,
informants or other surveillance methods can be concealed by crediting it to another source. An
unnamed former federal agent who received tips from the SOD gave an example of how the process
worked: "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.'
And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search
it," the agent said. If an arrest was made, agents were instructed to hide the fact that the initial tip had
come from SOD, and instead use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information." This
process is sometimes used to hide case details from prosecutors and judges, as well as defense
attorneys. Several lawyers told Reuters that the practice could jeopardize a defendant's constitutional
right to fair trial and cover up evidence that might otherwise be inadmissible. DEA officials defended the
technique, however, calling it a common law enforcement tool that allows the SOD to crack high-profile
cases.
5. No solvency, the aff doesn’t actually end the war on drugs, just makes it harder
to catch suspects
6. Forfeiture laws incentivize local police to increase drug policing
Katherine Baicker, UCLA, United States, NBER, United States, and, Mireille Jacobson, University of
California, Irvine, School of Social Ecology I, Irvine, CA, 31 March 2007, “Finders keepers: Forfeiture
laws, policing incentives, and local budgets”, Journal of Public Economics 91 (2007) 2113–2136, Elsevier,
Date Accessed 7/23/15, JL @ DDI
Because of the many levels of government involved, “asset forfeiture” laws provide a particularly
informative example of the implications of using financial incentives to influence the provision of public
goods in a federal system. In an effort to induce police to do more anti-drug policing, both the federal
government and many state governments introduced laws in the 1980s that allow law enforcement
agencies to keep a substantial fraction of the assets that they seize in drug arrests. This drug-related
asset forfeiture is a source of considerable controversy, as the legal hurdles for forfeiture are often
lower than for criminal conviction and those subject to seizures can find it difficult to recover their
property, even when they are found not guilty of related criminal charges.2 Many claim (and our data
confirm) that forfeitures have become a major revenue source for some local police and prosecutors,
giving them an incentive not just to deter crime but also to raise funds. The potential response of
localities to these laws highlights a fundamental problem in the use of financial incentives to solve
agency problems in the provision of public goods in a federal system: different levels of government
may have competing goals and constraints. Federal and state governments introduced forfeiture
incentives to increase anti-drug policing, but counties can undermine those incentives by adjusting their
allocations to police. In fact, some states' laws explicitly acknowledge that local governments could (but
should not!) reduce their police allocations in response to seizures.3 Similar agency problems arise in a
range of other programs. For example, Baicker and Staiger (2005) show that federal health care funds
targeted to poor hospitals are often expropriated by state governments for other uses when the
opportunity arises and Duggan (2000) finds that state funds channeled to county and district hospitals
treating a“disproportionate share” of publicly insured patients are largely offset by reductions in local
spending. Similarly, Gordon (2004) finds that increases in federal spending on low-income school
districts are offset by reductions in local spending.
Unregulated Extensions
**also link on cartels DA** Decriminalization would make the drug trade worse
Matthew S. Jenner, Articles Editor, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies; J.D., 2011, Indiana
University Maurer School of Law; B.A. cum laude, 2008, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2011,
“International Drug Trafficking: A Global Problem with a Domestic Solution”, Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies Volume 18, Issue 2, Project Muse, Date Accessed 7/22/15, JL @ DDI
Other scholars propose decriminalization as the answer.132 However, decriminalization would not have
the same effect on the market as legalization. In a decriminalized world, production and trafficking
would still be illegal, so there would still be the potential for high profits, yielding an incentive for selfhelp violence, and the drug trade would remain profitable for dangerous criminal organizations.
Additionally, under a decriminalization framework, countries would be faced with the same domestic
drug problems as legalization.
DEA Ended Program Already Extensions
The DEA metadata program has been shut down
Brad Heath, 4-8-2015, "U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades," USA TODAY,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/07/dea-bulk-telephone-surveillanceoperation/70808616/, Date Accessed 8/1/15, JL @ DDI
The Justice Department revealed in January that the DEA had collected data about calls to "designated
foreign countries." But the history and vast scale of that operation have not been disclosed until now.
The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA's intelligence arm, was the government's first
known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by
millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the
massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.
That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans' privacy
after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.
Forfeiture Extensions
Forfeiture policies incentivize anti-drug policing
Katherine Baicker, UCLA, United States, NBER, United States, and, Mireille Jacobson, University of
California, Irvine, School of Social Ecology I, Irvine, CA, 31 March 2007, “Finders keepers: Forfeiture
laws, policing incentives, and local budgets”, Journal of Public Economics 91 (2007) 2113–2136, Elsevier,
Date Accessed 7/23/15, JL @ DDI
Asset forfeiture policies, like performance bonuses for schools, hospitals, or managers, provide financial
incentives to align local agents' interests with those of policy-makers. In a federal system, where
different intervening levels of government may have competing interests and social goals, such
incentive programs may not work as efficiently as intended. Our analysis of asset seizure laws shows
that these financial incentives change the behavior of not only police but also county governments. Both
respond to the incentives created by seizures laws in a sophisticated way. Local governments capture a
significant fraction of the seizures that police make by reducing their other allocations to policing,
partially undermining the statutory incentive created by seizure laws. They are more likely to do so in
times of fiscal distress. Police, in turn, respond to the real net incentives for seizures once local offsets
are taken into account, not simply the incentives set out in statute. When police are really allowed to
keep the assets they seize, they increase anti-drug policing. A simple analysis of the effects of asset
forfeiture laws, as they appear on the books, would provide a distorted view of their effects. These
findings have strong implications for the effectiveness of using financial incentives to solve agency
problems in the provision of public goods in a federal system more broadly, from education to health
care to welfare. In particular, they suggest that the ability to influence public agents through federal and
state laws is limited by the ability of local governments to divert funds to other uses. Ignoring this yields
a misleading picture of the responsiveness of local agents to incentives and the effectiveness of federal
and state policies. Understanding the financial incentives faced by each agency and each level of
government involved in the budget process is a complicated but crucial component of designing policies
to affect the provision of public goods. As in private markets, when incentives can be made to reach the
agents in question, they can be very effective and powerful tools for influencing behavior. In the case of
public goods provided in a federal system, however, optimal policies must account for the responses of
intervening levels of governments to incentives as well.
Heg Turn (Can be Impact Scenarios to I-Law)
Breaking drug treaties causes a loss of America’s standing
Lopez 9/12/14
(German, writer @ Vox, 9/12/14 “How much of the war on drugs is tied to international treaties?”, Vox,
http://www.vox.com/cards/war-on-drugs-marijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth/war-on-drugs-internationaltreaties, Date Accessed 7/27/15, JL @ DDI)
Still, Martin Jelsma, an international drug policy expert at the Transnational Institute, argued that
ignoring or pulling out of the international drug conventions could seriously damage America's standing
around the world. "Pacta sunt servanda ('agreements must be kept') is the most fundamental principle
of international law and it would be very undermining if countries start to take an 'a-la-carte' approach
to treaties they have signed; they cannot simply comply with some provisions and ignore others without
losing the moral authority to ask other countries to oblige to other treaties," Jelsma wrote in an email.
"So our preference is to acknowledge legal tensions with the treaties and try to resolve them." To
resolve such issues, many critics of the war on drugs hope to reform international drug laws in 2016
during the next General Assembly Special Session on drugs. "There is tension with the tax-and-regulate
approach to marijuana in some jurisdictions," Malinowska-Sempruch said. "But it's all part of a process,
and that's why we hope the UN debate in 2016 is as open as possible, so that we can settle some of
these questions and, if necessary, modernize the system." Until then, any country taking steps to
revamp its drug policy regime could face criticisms and a loss of credibility from its international peers.
Failure to maintain U.S. hegemony would cause global instability—nuclear
proliferation, territorial disputes and escalation become inevitable
The Economist, 2013 [“If I ruled the world,” from the print edition, Nov. 23,
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21590098-being-charge-hard-work-it-has-its-perks-ifi-ruled-world, 7-3-2014, RGorman]
The corollary is that, without the continuing application of American power, the system would begin to
fray. If America were to become weaker or to withdraw, its values would erode along with its power. In
a recent book Mr Brzezinski set out some of the risks. Regional powers would vie for pre-eminence and
assert their historic claims. States such as Georgia, Taiwan and Ukraine, which all live in the shadow of a
much bigger neighbour, would be especially vulnerable. Nuclear-threshold powers like Japan and South
Korea that today are content to rely on American nuclear protection may proliferate for fear that, in a
crisis, its ally would not credibly threaten to push the button. As emerging powers start to feel that
institutions such as the UN Security Council no longer reflect the balance of power, they could begin to
reject them. The implications are alarming. Autocratic states like China and Russia would not want to
see strongmen pushed aside. Coups would be more likely to be defined as internal matters. Territorial
disputes in places like the South China Sea, which today America insists must be dealt with
diplomatically, may come to be resolved by force. If the Indian and Chinese navies thought that America
could no longer guarantee to keep the sea lanes open, they would take the job on themselves,
eventually leading to military competition between two nuclear states. Americans have many reasons to
feel that primacy benefits them. Being able to set the agenda and shape coalitions is an exorbitant
privilege. So is being able to prosper in a system that broadly works according to your own world view.
However, world leadership takes constant maintenance. “Democracy and open markets have spread so
widely in part because they have been defended by US aircraft-carriers,” notes Charles Kupchan, an
American academic. This is especially true when the balance of power is shifting, as it is today. A number
of emerging powers are looking at a system made in Washington to see what is in it for them. Ahead of
the pack is China.
Heg Turn Extensions
Recent flirtations with retrenchment proves that instability and war will only worsen
if heg continues to decline
Hiatt, Editor for the Washington Post, 2014 [Fred, The Washington Post, “Fred Hiatt: Will Obama
Rethink his Global Strategy?,” March 23, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-willobama-rethink-his-global-strategy/2014/03/23/75ce4eae-af93-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html, 88-2014, RGorman]
As the United States retrenched, the world became more dangerous. China continued a traditional —
19th-century, Secretary of State John F. Kerry might call it — military buildup, accompanied by
aggressive territorial assertions in East and Southeast Asia. Tensions built among Japan, the Koreas and
China as all wondered about America’s staying power. (The joke was that everyone in the world believed
the pivot to Asia was real, except Asian allies, who saw little evidence of it.) North Korea’s nuclear
buildup proceeded unchecked. Egypt’s government is more repressive than in Hosni Mubarak’s days —
and less friendly to the United States. In 2013, freedom regressed in 54 countries, compared with 40 in
which it advanced — the eighth straight year of net decline, according to Freedom House. In Syria,
Obama was confident two years ago that Assad’s “days are numbered,” as he told Jeffrey Goldberg in an
interview in the Atlantic. “It’s a matter not of if, but when.” He periodically promised, but never
delivered, substantial arms and training for moderate forces opposed to Assad. Meanwhile, Assad’s
position strengthened, even as he brought about what a U.N. official calls “the greatest humanitarian
disaster since Rwanda.” Al-Qaeda forces established havens from which they can threaten the United
States and Europe, and they are spreading into Lebanon and Iraq. Now Putin has engineered the baldest
violation of state sovereignty since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Obama has responded
sensibly with sanctions aimed at Putin’s inner circle and promises to bolster Ukraine. You can argue
whether he has calibrated exactly right, but he has appropriately engaged with and led the United
States’ European partners. But these are early steps — and they are also only tactical steps. As the
administration refashions its policy toward a changed Europe, will it reexamine its broader strategy,
too? Will Obama question his confidence that the United States can safely pull back from the world? The
instinctive White House response will be to head into the political bunker: to deny that it ever displayed
isolationist tendencies while painting critics as wild-eyed warmongers. This reflexive belligerence is
understandable given that Obama’s political enemies will happily use overseas setbacks to score points.
But the stakes are too high to leave the debate in those trenches. Tempting as it may be, the United
States doesn’t get to choose between nation-building at home and leadership abroad; it has to do both.
With almost three years left in his presidency, it’s not too late for Obama to change course.
Softpower Turn (Can be Impact Scenarios to I-Law)
Violating treaties collapses US soft power
Koh, 2003
(Harold Hongju, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, "On American Exceptionalism",
Stanford Law Reivew Vol. 55, p. 5000, LexisNexis, Date Accessed 7/27/15, JL @ DDI)
Similarly, the oxymoronic concept of "imposed democracy" authorizes top-down regime change in the
name of democracy. Yet the United States has always argued that genuine democracy must flow from
the will of the people, not from military occupation. n67 Finally, a policy of strategic unilateralism seems
unsustainable in an interdependent world. For over the past two centuries, the United States has
become party not just to a few treaties, but to a global network of closely interconnected treaties
enmeshed in multiple frameworks of international institutions. Unilateral administration decisions to
break or bend one treaty commitment thus rarely end the matter, but more usually trigger vicious cycles
of treaty violation. In an interdependent world, [*1501] the United States simply cannot afford to
ignore its treaty obligations while at the same time expecting its treaty partners to help it solve the
myriad global problems that extend far beyond any one nation's control: the global AIDS and SARS
crises, climate change, international debt, drug smuggling, trade imbalances, currency coordination, and
trafficking in human beings, to name just a few. Repeated incidents of American treaty-breaking create
the damaging impression of a United States contemptuous of both its treaty obligations and treaty
partners. That impression undermines American soft power at the exact moment that the United States
is trying to use that soft power to mobilize those same partners to help it solve problems it simply
cannot solve alone: most obviously, the war against global terrorism, but also the postwar construction
of Iraq, the Middle East crisis, or the renewed nuclear militarization of North Korea.
Only soft power solves terrorism – appeals to moderates and public diplomacy
Nye, 04 (Joseph S, Former Dean of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and
Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard, “The Decline of America’s Soft Power: Why Washington
Should Worry,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 3, May-June 2004, pp. 16-20, JSTOR)
Soft power, therefore, is not just a matter of ephemeral popularity; it is a means of obtaining outcomes
the United States wants. When Washington discounts the importance of its attractiveness abroad, it
pays a steep price. When the United States becomes so unpopular that being pro-American is a kiss of
death in other countries domestic politics, foreign political leaders are unlikely to make helpful
concessions (witness the defiance of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey in M arch 2003) And when U.S. policies
lose their legitimacy in the eyes of others, distrust grows, reducing U.S. leverage in international affairs.
Some hardline skeptics might counter that, whatever its merits, soft power has little importance in the
current war against terrorism; after all, Osama bin Laden and his followers are repelled, not attracted,
by American culture and values. But this claim ignores the real metric of success in the current war,
articulated in Rumsfeld's now-famous memo that was leaked in February 2003: "Are we capturing killing
or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are
recruiting training and deploying against us?" The current struggle against Islamist terrorism is not a
clash of civilizations; it is a contest closely tied to the civil war raging within Islamic civilization between
moderates and extremists. The United States and its allies will win only if they adopt policies that appeal
to those moderates and use public diplomacy effectively to communicate that appeal. Yet the world's
only superpower, and the leader in the information revolution, spends as little on public diplomacy as
does France or the United Kingdom-and is all too often outgunned in the propaganda war by
fundamentalists hiding in caves.