War on Drugs Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
War on Drugs Affirmative
War on Drugs Affirmative ................................................................................................ 1
Summary .................................................................................................................. 3
Glossary of Terms (1/2) ............................................................................................ 4
1AC (1/8) .................................................................................................................. 6
Case Debate
Case Extensions: War on Drugs is Racist ............................................................. 14
Case Extensions: Decarceration creates opportunities for freedom ....................... 15
Answers to: Movements Turn ................................................................................. 16
Answers to: Policing Continues .............................................................................. 18
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance remains (1/2) .................................................. 19
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains – Extensions (1/2) ........................... 21
Answers to: Reforming War on Drugs will solve ..................................................... 23
Answers to: Weed Legalization Fixes the System (1/3) .......................................... 24
Answers to: War on Drugs Stop Criminals .............................................................. 27
Answers to: Utilitarianism (1/3) ............................................................................... 28
Answers to: State Solutions Bad (1/3) .................................................................... 31
Answers to: State Level Surveillance ...................................................................... 34
Answers to: Status Quo Solves .............................................................................. 35
Topicality
Answers to: Topicality – Domestic Surveillance = Terrorism (1/2) .......................... 37
Answers to: Topicality – We Meet Extensions ........................................................ 39
Answers to: Topicality – Counter-Interpretation Extensions ................................... 40
Organized Crime Answers
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- Marijuana Legalization now............. 41
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- Kingpin Focus ................................ 42
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- War on Drugs not key ..................... 43
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage– Ending War on Drugs Stops Cartels
................................................................................................................................ 44
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War on Drugs Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Decriminalization Counterplan
State Decriminalization Counterplan Answers (1/3)................................................ 46
Answers to: State Decrim Counterplan – Solvency Deficit Extensions (1/2) ........... 49
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Racial Biases Continue Extensions ..... 51
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Administrative Tinkering Extensions .... 52
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Permutation do both Extensions .......... 53
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Fed Key Extensions ............................. 54
2
War on Drugs Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Summary
The War on Drugs is the combination of the prohibition of drugs like marijuana, cocaine,
and heroin and the utilization of military and law force to enforce that prohibition. In the
context of the affirmative, the War on Drugs would be utilizing surveillance technology
(like wiretapping, metadata gathering, etc.) to stop the illegal drug trade. Currently, the
illegal drug trade in America is largely supplied by cartels from Mexico. This summary
gives a good outline of how the War on Drugs has developed:
https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/paradox/htele.html
This affirmative argues that the war on drugs is used to police and arrest communities
of color. Marijuana, cocaine, and heroin arrests disproportionately target African
American and Latino/a people. According to the Department of Health and Human
services, young white people smoke more marijuana than black people, but black
people make up 75% of the drug arrests. In large cities like Los Angeles, Chicago or
New York, black people are arrested 13 times more for drugs than white people. This
implies that racial profiling is an inherent aspect to the War on Drugs, and it ought to
end.
The affirmative also argues that ending the war on drugs is a launching pad to ending
and protesting the larger issue of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex.
While the war on drugs isn’t the only tool of mass incarceration, it is by far the largest
one. The affirmative isn’t the ultimate and final solution to policing and institutional
racism, it’s the starting point for understanding how the prison system functions and to
start generating strategies it.
The affirmatives best argument against the reformism K is that the permutation: the
alternative’s strategy of changing the cultural norms regarding racism works very well
with the affirmatives strategy of ending the war on drugs. In fact, they often go hand-inhand with one another because the law, while not the perfect solution to the problem,
can take meaningful steps to ending racism. In fact, prominent abolitionists in America
right now like Angela Davis and Julia Sudbury who argue for the ending of all prisons
think the law can make meaningful advances against the prison system.
To answer the negative’s state decriminalization counterplan, the affirmative ought to
argue that decriminalization is a failed strategy to end policing against communities of
color. Decriminalization (like the word implies) ends the criminal penalties to drug use
and possession. It does not end civil penalties like tickets, fines, etc. and it is still illegal
to hold a large amount of drugs with the intent to sell. New York decriminalized
marijuana in 1977 and it didn’t do very much to end the war on drugs, but stop-and-frisk
laws were put in place which ended up policing communities of color even more than
before. The civil penalties also disproportionately targeted communities of color as well
so policing still continued.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary of Terms (1/2)
1. Neoliberalism -- An approach to economics and social studies in which control of
economic factors is shifted from the public sector to the private sector.
2. Black Body – A reference to the representation of Blacks as a commodified object.
3. Incarceration – The state of being confined in prison or detained.
4. Institutional Racism – any system of inequality based on race in institutions such as
public government bodies, private business corporations, and universities.
5. Decarceration – The process of removing people from places of imprisonment such
as prison or decreasing the rate of imprisonment. It is a term the represents the literal
opposite of incarceration.
6. Utilitarianism – A philosophical view that argues that actions are ethically right are
useful or for the benefit of the majority. The greatest number should be the guiding
principle of conduct.
7. Whiteness – a social construction that provides material and symbolic privileges to
whites, those passing as white, and sometimes honorary whites.
8. Prison Industrial Complex – a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of
government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions
to economic, social, and political problems.
9. Criminalization – the process of turning an activity or act into a criminal offense
legally, socially, or culturally.
10. White supremacy – the belief that white people are superior to those of all other
races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary of Terms (2/2)
11. Reformism – the assumption that gradual changes through and within existing
institutions can ultimately change a society’s fundamental economic system and political
structures.
12. Existential Threat – a threat to something’s survival.
13. Hegemony – leadership or dominance by one country over the international
system.
14. Pedagogy – the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic
subject or theoretical concept.
15. Codification – The process of arranging laws or rules into a systematic code.
16. Biopolitics – a concept in social theory used to examine the strategies and
mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of
authority over knowledge, power, and the processes of subjection.
17. Necropolitics – the ultimate expression of sovereignty. It is the power and capacity
to dictate who may live and who may die.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (1/8)
The drug war causes mass incarceration and creates the predominant mode of racist social
control—prison expansion maintains racial hierarchies and prevent black self
determination. Prison expansion maintains racial hierarchies and destroys communities of
color.
Alexander, Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School 2006
[Michelle, Federalism, Race, and Criminal Justice, Chapter pp. 219-228]
Most Americans today can look back and see slavery and Jim Crow laws for what they
were-extraordinary and immoral forms of social control used to oppress black and brown
people. However, few believe that a similar form of social control exists today. What I have
come to recognize is that, contrary to popular belief, a new form of social control does exist,
as disastrous and morally indefensible as Jim Crow-the mass incarceration of people of
color. There is an important story to be told that helps explain the role of the criminal justice
system in resurrecting, in a new guise, the same policies of racial segregation, political
disenfranchisement, and social stigmatization that have long oppressed and controlled all
people of color, particularly African Americans.
The story begins with federalism and its evolving methods of maintaining white supremacy.
A recent twist has been added; one that the civil rights community has failed to explain to those
who do not read reports issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics or Supreme Court decisions. In
1980, 330,000 people were incarcerated in federal and state prisons7 - the vast majority of whom
were people of color. 8 Since then, the number has more than quadrupled to over 1.3 million.9
When prison and jail populations are combined, the number jumps to over two million. 10
Although African American men comprise less than seven percent of the population, they
comprise half of the prison and jail population.11 Today, one out of three African American
men is either in prison, on probation, or on parole.l2 Latinos are not far behind. They are the
fastest growing racial group being imprisoned, comprising 10.9 percent of all state and federal
inmates in 1985, and nineteen percent in 2003.13 We know how this happened. In 1980, the
Reagan administration ushered in the War on Drugs, another major backlash against civil
rights. Although we typically think of the Reagan era backlash as attacking affirmative action and
civil rights laws, the War on Drugs is perhaps the most sweeping and damaging
manifestation of deliberate indifference-or downright hostility-to communities of color.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (2/8)
The War on Drugs is simply the latest structure of Black surveillance motivated by fear of
the black body. This surveillance comes in multiple forms of violence to Black communities
Kundnani and Kumar, lecturer at New York University and Associate Professor of Medical
Studies at Rutgers, 2015
(Arun and Deepa ,“Race, surveillance, and empire”, International Socialist Review
http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire)
The War on Drugs—launched by President Reagan in 1982—dramatically accelerated the
process of racial securitization. Michelle Alexander notes that At the time he declared this new
war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing
the nation. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to
do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By
waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the
racially defined “others”—the undeserving.52
Operation Hammer, carried out by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1988, illustrates how
racialized surveillance was central to the War on Drugs. It involved hundreds of officers in
combat gear sweeping through the South Central area of the city over a period of several
weeks, making 1,453 arrests, mostly for teenage curfew violations, disorderly conduct, and
minor traffic offenses. Ninety percent were released without charge but the thousands of young
Black people who were stopped and processed in mobile booking centers had their names
entered onto the “gang register” database, which soon contained the details of half of the Black
youths of Los Angeles. Entry to the database rested on such supposed indicators of gang
membership as high-five handshakes and wearing red shoelaces. Officials compared the Black
gangs they were supposedly targeting to the National Liberation Front in Vietnam and the
“murderous militias of Beirut,” signaling the blurring of boundaries between civilian policing and
military force, and between domestic racism and overseas imperialism.53
In the twelve years leading up to 1993, the rate of incarceration of Black Americans
tripled,54 establishing the system of mass incarceration that Michelle Alexander refers to as
the new Jim Crow.55 And yet those in prison were only a quarter of those subject to
supervision by the criminal justice system, with its attendant mechanisms of routine
surveillance and “intermediate sanctions,” such as house arrests, boot camps, intensive
supervision, day reporting, community service, and electronic tagging. Criminal records
databases, which are easily accessible to potential employers, now hold files on around one-third
of the adult male population.56 Alice Goffman has written of the ways that mass incarceration is
not just a matter of imprisonment itself but also the systems of policing and surveillance
that track young Black men and label them as would-be criminals before and after their time
in prison. From stops on the street to probation meetings, these systems, she says, have
transformed poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (3/8)
The War on Drugs is nothing more than a federal surveillance program. It reaches every
aspect of life in communities of color in an attempt to maintain the racial hierarchy.
Adams-Fuller, Associate Professor of Sociology at Howard University, 2009
[Terri, “Racial Profiling” in Institute for Public Safety & Justice: Fact Sheet,
http://www.ipsj.org/publications/RacialProfiling.pdf
In recent years racial profiling on American roadways - commonly referred to as DWB (driving
while black) - has come to the forefront of popular discourse. The phenomenon of pulling
over persons of color on spurious traffic violations based on preconceived conceptions is a
common travel experience for many people of color. For years African American and
Latino/Hispanic Americans have known that their communities have been the recipients of
an inordinate amount of police surveillance.
The general American public has just recently become aware of the magnitude of this problem
during the latter end of the 1990s, as the media began to increase its coverage of this
phenomenon. Although communities of color have always suffered more police surveillance than
other communities, this scrutiny has elevated during certain periods in history, often dictated by
politics. The African American and Hispanic/Latino communities increasingly became the
subjects of police surveillance fol1owing President Reagan's declaration of the nations
"war on drugs" in 1982. The increased frenzy that surrounded the "war on drugs" prompted
many law enforcement agencies around the country to intensify their inspection of
supposedly "suspicious" persons. These increased efforts have disproportionately been
targeted towards communities of color (Walker, et al. 1996). Across the country profiles are
utilized by many law enforcement agents, which are often largely based on racial or ethnic
characteristics.
According to a 1999 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report, in 1986 the Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA) launched "Operation Pipeline" a drug prohibition program that trained over
27,000 police officers from 48 participating states to "use pretext stops in order to find
drugs in vehicles." It has been reported that some of the materials used by the DEA in
Operation Pipeline "implicitly if not explicitly" encourage police to target minority motorists
(Harris, 1999). Thus the nations highest drug enforcement agency has lent the appearance of
legitimacy to the use of racial profiles.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (4/8)
This is a continuous extermination of minority populations that must be stopped---as
Americans, we must speak out in public spaces about the injustice of laws
Brown Watch, 2012
(Brown Watch, News for People of Color, "War on Drugs is a War on Black & Brown Men - 75
Years of Racial Control: Happy Birthday Marijuana Prohibition", October 2, www.brownwatch.com/genocide-watch/2012/10/2/war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-black-brown-men-75-years-ofracial.html)
From 2002 to 2011, African American and Hispanic residents made up close to 90% of
people stopped. This is not limited to New York. In California, African-Americans are 4 times more
likely to be arrested for marijuana, 12 times more likely to go to prison with a felony marijuana
charge, and 3 times more likely to go to prison with a marijuana possession charge. The strategy
of using marijuana laws to stop, detain and imprison poor and minority populations must
stop NOW. In the past 75 years we have seen mounting evidence of the benign nature of the
marijuana plant, and its tremendous potential for medical development. But the rampant
misinformation about the effects of marijuana USE is dwarfed by the lifetime of suffering
that a marijuana CONVICTION can bring.
In 2010, there were 853,839 marijuana arrests in the U.S., 750,591 of those were for possession. A
drug conviction in America is the gift that keeps on giving. Affected individuals must face a lifetime
of stigma that can prevent employment, home ownership, education, voting and the ability to be a
parent. The issue of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs is featured in the new documentary,
The House I Live In. In the film, Richard L. Miller, author of Drug Warriors and Their Prey, From
Police Power to Police State, presents a very sinister take on the method behind the Drug War
madness.
Miller suggests that drug laws, such as those for marijuana are part of a process of
annihilation aimed at poor and minority populations. Miller poses that drug laws are
designed to identify, ostracize, confiscate, concentrate, and annihilate these populations by
assigning the label of drug user, criminal, or addict, seizing property, taking away freedom
and institutionalizing entire communities in our ever growing prison system. We can stop
this from happening. Marijuana was deemed illegal without acknowledging science or the will of
the people. 75 years later, 50% of the population supports marijuana legalization, and
families are still being torn apart and lives destroyed over the criminal sanctions associated
with its use. The most vulnerable members of our society are also the targets of a prison
industrial complex out of control and getting bigger every day. Someone is arrested for
marijuana in the U.S. every 38 seconds, we have no time to waste, tax and regulate now.
Oregon, Colorado and Washington are all considering a more sensible and humane approach to
marijuana as all three have tax and regulate initiatives on their ballots this November.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (5/8)
Institutional structures of domination create everyday holocausts—you should ignore event
based impacts that ask you to ignore the ongoing suffering and death in communities of
color.
Omolade, historian and organizer, 1989
[Barbara, “We Speak for the Planet”, Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politices, ed Harris &
King pp. 172-176]
The Achilles heel of the organized peace movement in this country has always been its
whiteness. In this multi-racial and racist society, no allwhite movement can have the
strength to bring about basic changes. It is axiomatic that basic changes do not occur in
any society unless the people who are oppressed move to make them occur. In our society
it is people of color who are the most oppressed. Indeed our entire history teaches us that
when people of color have organized and struggled-most especially, because of their particular
history, Black people-have moved in a more humane direction as a society, toward a better life for
all people.1 Western man's whiteness, imagination, enlightened science, and movements toward
peace have developed from a culture and history mobilized against women of color. The political
advancements of white men have grown directly from the devastation and holocaust of people of
color and our lands. This technological and material progress has been in direct proportion to the
undevelopment of women of color. Yet the dayto- day survival, political struggles, and rising
up of women of color, especially black women in the United States, reveal both complex
resistance to holocaust and undevelopment and often conflicted responses to the military
and war. The Holocausts Women of color are survivors of and remain casualties of
holocausts, and we are direct victims of war-that is, of open armed conflict between countries or
between factions within the same country. But women of color were not soldiers, nor did we
trade animal pelts or slaves to the white man for guns, nor did we sell or lease our lands to
the white man for wealth. Most men and women of color resisted and fought back, were
slaughtered, enslaved, and force marched into plantation labor camps to serve the white
masters of war and to build their empires and war machines. People of color were and are
victims of holocausts-that is, of great and widespread destruction, usually by fire. The world
as we knew and created it was destroyed in a continual scorched earth policy of the white
man. The experience of Jews and other Europeans under the Nazis can teach us the value of
understanding the totality of destructive intent, the extensiveness of torture, and the demonical
apparatus of war aimed at the human spirit. A Jewish father pushed his daughter from the lines of
certain death at Auschwitz and said, "You will be a remembrance-You tell the story. You survive."
She lived. He died. Many have criticized the Jews for forcing non-Jews to remember the 6 million
Jews who died under the Nazis and for etching the names Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Terezin
and Warsaw in our minds. Yet as women of color, we, too, are "remembrances" of all the
holocausts against the people of the world. We must remember the names of concentration
camps such as Jesus, Justice, Brotherhood, and Integrity, ships that carried millions of
African men, women, and children chained and brutalized across the ocean to the "New
World."
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War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (6/8)
Thus we advocate that the United States federal government the end war on drugs by
dismantling its domestic surveillance operations.
11
War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (7/8)
Our advocacy is the only way to bring an end to the system of institutional racism—the
reason reforms have failed is because they haven’t challenged the underlying racial
ideology
Alexander, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010
[Michelle, is an associate professor of law, a civil rights advocate and a writer. “New Jim Crow :
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” pp. 221-224]
King certainly appreciated the contributions of civil rights lawyers (he relied on them to get him out
of jail), but he opposed the tendency of civil rights lawyers to identify a handful of individuals who
could make great plaintiffs in a court of law, then file isolated cases. He believed what was
necessary was to mobilize thousands to make their case in the court of public opinion. In his view,
it was a flawed public consensus— not merely flawed policy— that was at the root of racial
oppression. Today, no less than fifty years ago, a flawed public consensus lies at the core of
the prevailing caste system. When people think about crime, especially drug crime, they do
not think about suburban housewives violating laws regulating prescription drugs or white
frat boys using ecstasy.
Drug crime in this country is understood to be black and brown, and it is because drug crime
is racially defined in the public consciousness that the electorate has not cared much what
happens to drug criminals— at least not the way they would have cared if the criminals
were understood to be white. It is this failure to care, really care across color lines, that lies at
the core of this system of control and every racial caste system that has existed in the
United States or anywhere else in the world. Those who believe that advocacy challenging
mass incarceration can be successful without overturning the public consensus that gave
rise to it are engaging in fanciful thinking, a form of denial. Isolated victories can be won—
even a string of victories— but in the absence of a fundamental shift in public consciousness,
the system as a whole will remain intact. To the extent that major changes are achieved
without a complete shift, the system will rebound. The caste system will reemerge in a new
form, just as convict leasing replaced slavery, or it will be reborn, just as mass
incarceration replaced Jim Crow. Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant make a similar
point in their book Racial Formation in the United States. They attribute the cyclical nature of
racial progress to the “unstable equilibrium” that characterizes the United States’ racial
order. 22
Under “normal” conditions, they argue, state institutions are able to normalize the
organization and enforcement of the prevailing racial order, and the system functions
relatively automatically. Challenges to the racial order during these periods are easily
marginalized or suppressed, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identity, and
ideology seems “natural.” These conditions clearly prevailed during slavery and Jim Crow.
12
War on Drugs Affirmative
First Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
1AC (8/8)
We are a strategy of decarceration. A launching pad for politics that can abolish prisons
and promote freedom.
Berger, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, 2013
[Dan, “Social Movements and Mass Incarceration: What is To Be Done?”, Souls: A Critical Journal
of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 15, Issue 1-2, 2013, pages 3-18]
The strategy of decarceration combines radical critique, direct action, and tangible goals for
reducing the reach of the carceral state. It is a coalitional strategy that works to shrink the
prison system through a combination of pragmatic demands and far-reaching, open-ended
critique. It is reform in pursuit of abolition. Indeed, decarceration allows a strategic launch
pad for the politics of abolition, providing what has been an exciting but abstract framework
with a course of action. 32
Rather than juxtapose pragmatism and radicalism, as has so often happened in the realm of
radical activism, the strategy of decarceration seeks to hold them in creative tension. It is a
strategy in the best tradition of the black freedom struggle. It is a strategy that seeks to take
advantage of political conditions without sacrificing its political vision. Today we are in a
moment where it is possible, in the words of an organizer whose work successfully closed
Illinois's infamous supermax prison Tamms in January 2013, to confront prisons as both an
economic and a moral necessity. 33 Prisons bring together diverse forms of oppression across
race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, HIV status and beyond. The movements against
them, therefore, will need to bring together diverse communities of resistance. They will need
to unite people across a range of issues, identities, and sectors. That is the coalition underlying
groups such as Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), the Nation Inside initiative,
and Decarcerate PA. The fight against prisons is both a targeted campaign and a broadbased struggle for social justice. These movements must include the leadership by those
directly affected while at the same work to understand that prisons affect us all. This message is
the legacy of prison rebellions from Attica in 1971 to Pelican Bay in 2012. The challenge is to
maintain the aspirational elements of that message while at the same time translating it into
a political program.
13
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Case Extensions: War on Drugs is Racist
The war on drugs and mass incarceration provide the white elite with a method of
destroying black communities
Alexander, Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School 2006
[Michelle, Federalism, Race, and Criminal Justice, Chapter pp. 219-228]
This war, which continues today, has nothing to do with solving drug abuse, and everything
to do with creating a political environment in which communities of color can be lawfully
targeted for mass incarceration.l4 Not unlike slavery and Jim Crow, mass incarceration
provides the white elite with social benefits. By segregating, incarcerating, and rendering
unemployable huge segments of the black and brown population, the racial hierarchy
remains intact. By denying blacks an equal and adequate education, barring them from
certain forms of employment, and relegating them to the worst neighborhoods, the white
elite has ensured that whites will never occupy the bottom rung of that hierarchy.
Today, slavery and Jim Crow laws no longer exist, and affirmative action has opened doors to
some, upsetting the racial caste system. Mass incarceration, however, has emerged as a new,
and arguably more durable, form of social controL's In addition to protecting their social
position, mass incarceration provides white elites with clear economic and political benefits.
The prison industry is hugely profitable. Marc Mauer's excellent book Race to Incarcerate
documents the unprecedented expansion of our criminal justice system and the ways that the race
to incarcerate has devastated communities of color.16 He cites promotional literature from the
prison industry, one piece of which stated: "While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise,
profits are to be made-profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now."
I?
The racism of the drug war is codified in law
Adams-Fuller, Associate Professor of Sociology at Howard University, 2009
[Terri, “Racial Profiling” in Institute for Public Safety & Justice: Fact Sheet,
http://www.ipsj.org/publications/RacialProfiling.pdf
The constitutionality of racial profiling was challenged in a series of Supreme Court cases.
The resulting rulings increased the power of police and reduced the rights of citizens. In
1996 the Supreme Court ruled (in the of case Whren v. U.S.) that law enforcement could stop
drivers for any traffic violation regardless of the true intent behind the officer's decision to
stop the driver. Later that same year the Supreme Court ruled (in the case of Ohio v. Robinette)
that police officers are not in violation of the 4th amendment if they fail to inform suspects that they
do not have to consent to having their vehicle searched. Additional powers were granted to the
police in 1997, when the Supreme Court ruled (in the case Maryland v. Wilson) that police
have the right to order passengers out of a vehicle whether or not there is reason to
suspect that they may be dangerous. These ruling have increased and sanctioned the
powers of the police, granting judicial permission to continue current practices, that are
often based on discrimination.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Case Extensions: Decarceration creates opportunities for freedom
(___)
(___) Decarceration is a political strategy that rips prisons from our social fabric and allows
oppressed communities the opportunity for freedom.
Berger, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, 2013
[Dan, “Social Movements and Mass Incarceration: What is To Be Done?”, Souls: A Critical Journal
of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 15, Issue 1-2, 2013, pages 3-18]
Decarceration, therefore, works not only to shrink the prison system but to expand
community cohesion and maximize what can only be called freedom. Political repression
and mass incarceration are joined at the hip. The struggles against austerity, carcerality,
and social oppression, the struggles for restorative and transformative justice, for
grassroots empowerment and social justice must be equally interconnected. For it is only
when the movement against prisons is as interwoven in the social fabric of popular
resistance as the expansion of prisons has been stitched into the wider framework of
society that we might hope to supplant the carceral state.
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War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Movements Turn
[___]
(___) Challenging the racist foundation of the war on drugs is a starting point for a broader
reform of the criminal justice system
Moskowitz, 14 April 2, Peter, “Report suggests US ready to end war on drugs,”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/2/drugs-pew-marijuana.html,
Views on drugs and drug policy in the United States have shifted significantly in the last few
years, as Americans become more amicable to the idea of lenient punishment for drug
users than ever before, according to a new survey. The poll, Pew Research Center’s first
comprehensive look at drug policy since 2001, suggests that Americans are not only supportive
of less harsh laws for marijuana, but also for hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. Drug
reform advocates say the survey shows the public has had a harsh reaction to the expensive and
largely ineffective policies of the war on drugs. But they also say the survey only tells half the story:
while public perception may have shifted, many policies that people seem to disagree with remain
in place, with few signs from politicians that they are willing to reverse course anytime soon. “The
public is definitely pretty far ahead of politicians,” said Jag Davies of the Drug Policy
Alliance, an organization that promotes alternatives to current drug policy. “Elected officials
have been so scared for so long, but they’re starting to realize it’s to their benefit to
reevaluate [their policies].” The survey, conducted in February and released on Wednesday,
finds that 67 percent of Americans think the government should focus less on punishment
and more on treatment for drug users, including users of heroin and cocaine. It also notes
that people are supportive of abolishing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. In 2001,
about half of those polled favored mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, but Pew’s most
recent survey found that 63 percent of people thought states moving away from the minimums was
a “good thing.” Pew also finds that by overwhelming majorities, people think alcohol is more
harmful to individual and societal health than marijuana. And perhaps most tellingly for the
immediate future of drug policy in America, 75 percent of respondents say that regardless of their
views on marijuana, they believe that full legalization is inevitable. Drug policy watchers say the
trends highlighted by the survey aren’t particularly surprising – perceptions of drug use
have been shifting in a more lenient direction for years. But they say the sheer size of the
shift shows how ready Americans are to move beyond the era of the war on drugs. “
16
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Movements Turn
(___)
(___) Incremental steps to chip away that prison-industrial complex are the best strategy –
even the most active and prominent abolitionist agree
Davis, an abolitionist, 2004, Angela Davis in an Interview with Dylan Rodriguez, Davis: The
Challenges of Prison Abolition, illinoisprisonwatch.blogspot.com/2010/03/davis-challenges-ofprison-abolition.html
Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred
to by Foucault in his analysis of prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison
reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger,
and what are considered "better," prisons.¶ The most difficult question for advocates of prison
abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to
safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual
abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of punishment. In other words, I do not think that
there is a strict dividing line between reform and abolition.¶ For example, it would be utterly
absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the demand for better health care
inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms
would make the prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care,
including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways in which prisons
violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that
elaborates specific decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on
the need to shift resources from punishment to education, housing, health care, and other
public resources and services.
17
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Policing Continues
(___)
(___) Empirics prove, police officers will stop policing
Dumke 14 Mick, Chicago Reader, 4-7, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-bust-blackspot-possession-after-decriminalization/Content?oid=13004240
"This is a giant vicious circle," says the veteran. "Do I want to be stopping everybody in these
neighborhoods? Absolutely not. But the craziness almost dictates it." The officers say no
tweaks to the ticketing ordinance will solve the problems. The neighborhoods need
economic alternatives to the drug trade. And both officers count themselves among the growing
number of people who believe the government should oversee the cannabis business. "Take it out
of the hands of the criminals," says the veteran. He won't get an argument from Alderman Proco
Joe Moreno (1st). "We all know the usage is pretty much even among different ethnicities," he
says. "It doesn't seem that the intent of the ordinance is being acted out on the street." Like the
officers, Moreno believes it's time to consider legalizing marijuana, which he maintains is less
harmful than alcohol (a position recently advocated by President Obama as well). "I think there's
broad public support for it," Moreno says. "The City Council gets a lot of criticism, but on a number
of issues we can move faster than the state or the federal government. It would be tough to pass,
but I'd be more than happy to lead that effort."
18
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance remains (1/2)
(___)
(___)Federal surveillance is overwhelmingly targeted at drug policing – It’s the cornerstone
of the war on drugs. 88% of wiretaps are from the war on drugs
Greenberg 2015—Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for WIRED, April 10, 2015, “Want to See
Domestic Spying’s Future? Follow the Drug War” http://www.wired.com/2015/04/want-seedomestic-spyings-future-follow-drug-war/
The DEA’s newly revealed bulk collection of billions of American phone records on calls to 116
countries preceded the NSA’s similar program by years and may have even helped to inspire it, as
reported in USA Today’s story Wednesday. And the program serves as a reminder that most of
the legal battles between government surveillance efforts and the Fourth Amendment’s
privacy protections over the last decades have played out first on the front lines of
America’s War on Drugs. Every surveillance test case in recent history, from beepers to cell
phones to GPS tracking to drones—and now the feds’ attempts to puncture the bubble of
cryptographic anonymity around Dark Web sites like the Silk Road—began with a narcotics
investigation. “If you asked me last week who was doing this [kind of mass surveillance] other
than the NSA, the DEA would be my first guess,” says Chris Soghoian, the lead technologist with
the American Civil Liberties Union. “The War on Drugs and the surveillance state are joined at
the hip.” It’s no secret that drug cases overwhelmingly dominate American law
enforcement’s use of surveillance techniques. The Department of Justice annually reports to
the judiciary how many wiretaps it seeks warrants for, broken down by the type of crime being
investigated. In 2013, the last such report, a staggering 88 percent of the 3,576 reported
wiretaps were for narcotics. That’s compared to just 132 wiretaps for homicide and assault
combined, for instance, and a mere eight for corruption cases.
19
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance remains (2/2)
(___) The affirmative presents a strategy to challenge the racist foundations of criminal
justice systems – we must focus on specific efforts to aid larger movements
Murakawa 2014, Associate Professor[2014, Naomi Murakawa is an Associate Professor Center
for African American Studies, “First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” ProQuest
ebrary]
Administrative tinkering does not confront the damning features of the American carceral
state, its scale and its racial concentration, which, when taken together reinforce and raise
African American vulnerability to premature death. By focusing on the intra-system
problems of “discretion,” lawmakers displaced questions of justice onto the more
manageable, measurable issues of system function. When framed as a problem of discretion—
that is, individual decision making permissible by formal rules— then solutions to racial
inequality double back to individual administrators and their institutional rules. In this sense,
problematizing discretion forces questions of remediation onto sanitary administrative
grounds. Should judges be elected or appointed? Should judges administer justice through
sentencing guidelines? No guidelines and some mandatory minimums? No mandatory
minimums and only mandatory maximums? Will judges or parole boards select the final
release date? These questions matter, but they cannot replace clear commitments to racial
justice. When they are posed independently of normative goals, process becomes the
proxy, not the path, to justice. Without a normatively grounded understanding of racial
violence, liberal reforms will do the administrative shuffle. This book traced a stark halfcentury turn from confronting white racial violence administered and enabled by carceral
apparatuses, to controlling black criminality through a procedurally fortified, race-neutral system.
Race liberals institutionalized the “right to safety” while skirting its animating call against statesanctioned white violence. Fixation on administrative minutiae distracted from the normative
core of punishment in a system of persistent racial hierarchy. Unlike administrative
tinkering, reforms for decriminalization and decarceration would push debates to their
normative core: what warrants punishment, in what form, and why? 18 In place of liberal
searches for the ideal procedural path to life incarceration, metrics of racial justice should
focus on what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and
exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
20
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains – Extensions (1/2)
(___)
(___) Federal surveillance is targeted at communities of color as a means of social control
Davis 1971—Angela Davis is a former Black Panther and civil rights activist, “Masked Racism:
Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex”
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisprison.html
Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array
of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails.
However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of
imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work.
Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the
ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety. The focus of state
policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control. Black, Latino, Native
American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of
drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and
Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately
propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is
thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, the
homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their
claim to social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal
measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus created
a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose
impoverishment is supposedly "solved" by imprisonment. Therefore, as the emphasis of
government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply
into the economic and ideological structures of U.S. society. Meanwhile, conservative
crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their
opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation.
But conversations about "race relations" will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex
that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.
21
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains – Extensions (2/2)
(___)
(___) Challenging the drug war can create momentum for larger change
Burns 2014 Rebecca, In These Times staff writer and assistant editor based in Chicago, THE
UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF LEGALIZATION, beyondchron.org/the-unbearable-whiteness-oflegalization/
***note ¶ Art Way--senior drug policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance in Colorado, which
lobbied for legalization.¶ David Leonard--associate professor in the department of critical culture,
gender and race studies at Washington State University¶ Mariame Kaba--Chicago-based activist;
founding director of the non-profit Project NIA, which works to decrease youth incarceration ¶ Art:
It’s true that marijuana reform is just one aspect. The whole question is: Why are we criminalizing
people for what they decide to put in their bodies? It’s also important to note that the drug war is a
federal policy; states receive money from D.C. to engage. When Washington and Colorado
legalized marijuana, they basically removed themselves from federal policy regarding marijuana
prohibition. I think that will provide momentum to change federal policy regarding other
substances. I don’t see the unintended consequence [that the War on Drugs would]
somehow become more and more entrenched when it comes to cocaine and other drugs.¶
Legalization is expected to be a boon for state coffers, as well as wealthy investors and so-called
“ganjapreneurs” now flocking to Colorado. But do you think it will create jobs or other economic
benefits in communities of color?¶ David: In some ways this looks like a gentrification of the drug—
those who always benefit will still benefit.¶ Art: I’m not aware of any industries that began with the
intention to create jobs for African Americans or poor people of color. No one said that this was
some type of panacea for the various root problems that African Americans face. It’s difficult
for people to find work if they have a drug conviction on their record, especially a felony, and
that’s still the case within the marijuana industry in Colorado—although there was a
successful push to make sure that only people with felonies relating to distribution of drugs are kept
out. Many of the concerns about who benefits are valid, but I don’t think they should
overshadow that we’re moving in the right direction.¶ What comes next for reformers?¶ Art:
You are likely to see medical marijuana [initiatives] in Florida within a year’s time that will break
open the discussion down South and begin reform efforts there. It doesn’t change the dayto-day reality in Louisiana and the South Side of Chicago right now, but persuasive reform
efforts will start to plant seeds across the country, as well as in our federal government.
22
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Reforming War on Drugs will solve
(___)
(___) Police forces will continue to find ways to criminalize communities of color unleas the
entire structure of the War on Drugs is challenged. Small changes will not make a
difference.
Burns ’14 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable Whiteness of
Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
One worry has been that the high price of legalized marijuana will encourage a black market and
that arrests for illegal distribution could actually increase. Mariame Kaba: I’m very concerned
about how this is going to play out on the ground. Young people who are selling drugs
because they have no other job opportunities are definitively not going to be able to
participate in the formal economy through the dispensaries. Is law enforcement going to go
after those young people 20 times harder now? AW: Yes, I am concerned that distribution
charges will increase. Whenever you make change, especially against law enforcement’s
status quo, it often finds a way to circumvent that change and maintain its budget. But we
haven’t seen anything that will lead us to believe that is taking place right now. And you have to
realize that these new marijuana laws are part of a much broader reform movement: Colorado has
also been revising its criminal justice laws. The first thing we did once Amendment 64 passed [in
Colorado] was to lower criminal penalties for those [between the ages of] 18 and 20 possessing
marijuana. So we are already working on preempting any type of net-widening. ITT:
What impact will marijuana legalization have on the War on Drugs as a whole? David J. Leonard:
Any changes in the War on Drugs will require continued organizing and agitation, because
history has shown that one step forward has also resulted in two steps back [for]
communities of color. New York decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That clearly did not lead to the
end of the War on Drugs in New York, or lessen its effects on communities of color. Instead, the
way the law was written provided the foundation for stop-and-frisk, because the law made it
a misdemeanor for marijuana to be in public view, which basically fostered incentives to
stop blacks and Latinos and tell them to empty their pockets. So I have a number of concerns
about the impact of these reforms on the War on Drugs. To give just one other example: Does
decriminalization apply to those who are on probation and being drug-tested? MK: Another concern
is whether, as the prices of marijuana start climbing [because of legalization] and [poor]
people turn to using other kinds of drugs, those drugs then get painted as the worst
possible drugs on the planet. The people who are doing the “worst” drugs somehow always
happen to be the most marginalized people within our culture. That’s why it’s so important
that we focus on uprooting the whole architecture of the War on Drugs. If we’re not talking
about the root issues of racism and classism, there are bound to be unintended
consequences.
23
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Weed Legalization Fixes the System (1/3)
(___)
(___) Marijuana legalization deepens isolations against communities of color by making
broader movements impossible
Simon , 2013 David, Creator of HBO’s The Wire, The Audacity of Despair, “Lost in a symptom: The Nation on marijuana reform,” 11-1,
http://davidsimon.com/lost-in-a-symptom-the-nation-on-marijuana-reform/The surest way to ensure the continued abuse of
people of color under the auspices of the drug war is to reduce or eliminate any
corresponding threat to white Americans. This seems to me to be such a fundamental of
realpolitik in the United States that I’m still a little bit astonished that The Nation, in a recent
assessment of marijuana reform efforts and racial bias, can’t see any forest from the trees. Not a
single fact about marijuana use and the racial bias that law enforcement exhibits with regard to the
drug is askew, of course. I agree with the article’s author, Dr. Carl Hart of Columbia University, on
his entire statistical premise: While I am entirely aware that marijuana arrests account for over 50
percent of all drug arrests, and while African-American and Latino suspects are certainly arrested
at disproportionate rates despite comparable white marijuana use is certain, I believe that the
extraordinary rates of incarceration of African-Americans — or all Americans, for that matter
— is the result of overall drug enforcement of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other
hard drugs. This is not to say that there are not thousands of incarcerated for marijuana arrests,
especially at the state level. In some states, draconian enforcement of marijuana statutes,
especially coupled with repeat-offender statutes, has certainly resulted in the imprisonment of
Americans, and likely those unfortunates are dispropotionately people of color. But as many urban
and high-population states have for the last several decades been liberalizing marijuana laws
and reducing or eliminating prison penalties on the drug, the greater share of those incarcerated
– and not merely arrested — under U.S. drug statutes has been comprised of hard-drug
defendants. And those number in the hundreds of thousands. Certainly, marijuana enforcement is
an opportunity for law enforcement to profile, harass and penalize minorities. And certainly, a
marijuana arrest can be used to establish a criminal history, achieve probationary verdicts and put
people of color under the control of the criminal justice system. To the extent that defendants opt
for suspended sentences and then are rearrested, or find themselves arrested in that minority of
states with retrograde marijuana codes, incarcerative outcomes do occur. But Dr. Hart’s linkage of
the ACLU report of racial bias in marijuana enforcement to the appalling percentage of AfricanAmerican males who will serve prison time needs to be carefully uncoupled. One in three AfricanAmerican boys born today will be imprisoned at some point not because of marijuana
enforcement, but because of the entirety of the drug war — and only by dealing with all of
drug enforcement and its subtext of racial and class control will that trend ever abate, much
less be reversed. Only by addressing political reform to the use or trafficking of those drugs that
drive the majority of prison sentences for drug crimes will the country begin to address itself to the
mechanism that has put 2.3 million Americans behind bars and made us the jailingest society in
human history. Which brings me back to my initial political worry when it comes to marijuana
24
War on Drugs Affirmative
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Answers to: Weed Legalization Fixes the System (2/3)
<<<Simon Continues>>>
reform, which, regrettably, has been over-simplified and mischaracterized in some quarters as it
volleys about on the internets. Here, again: Yes, marijuana is among the least dangerous
prohibited substances in the drug world. Yes, any continuing criminal arrests for its use are
dysfunctional and draconian. Yes, as with any drug law, such arrests target people of color
disproportionately. But accept as well that marijuana is also the most basic and fundamental
place where white, middle-class and affluent America intersects with the drug war. It is the
place where many, many white families of economic means and political relevance encounter even
the most moderate risk to their status and future. For the majority of that cohort, it is the only place
where the drug war’s rubber actually hits any stretch of suburban blacktop. Of course, it is
impossible to argue against the immediate practicalities of liberalizing marijuana use and reducing
the criminal penalties such. In a country with our levels of alcohol use, no one should be
incarcerated or even criminally arrested for smoking weed. But in so liberalizing this single
sphere of our national drug war, the actual political isolation of the poor, and of poor people
of color especially, will deepen. Having removed much of the white, middle-class interaction
with drug enforcement from the equation, those who are championing marijuana reform and
ignoring the overall disaster of the drug war will be perpetuating the fundamental and
continuing injustice.
25
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Weed Legalization Fixes the System (3/3)
(___) Legalization of marijuana doesn’t strike to the core of the issue
Levy-Pounds 13 Nekima, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Community Justice
Project at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minneapolis). ALBANY GOVERNMENT
LAW REVIEW, IMPACTS OF THE DRUG WAR ON YOUNG BLACK MEN, Vol. 6
In the face of discriminatory patterns and practices of harassment and humiliating searches, it is understandable why the simplest approach may
appear to be the legalization of marijuana, in hopes of reducing the unnecessary arrests or harassment of young black men. However, it is important
to recognize that the initial steps that were taken
by Colorado voters to legalize marijuana may not be
enough to effectively address the root-level issues that lead to the possession and sales of marijuana amongst young
men of color. To be clear, studies show that whites are in the majority as far as marijuana usage and arrests go.64 However, African American and
Latino males are more likely than whites to be arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana.65 What may not be apparent is the fact that
even with the dramatic change to the law in Colorado, men of color may still be at risk of
experiencing racial profiling and harassment, especially in circumstances where law
enforcement suspects that they are in possession of more than an ounce of marijuana . Beyond
that, persons caught selling marijuana in any amount without a license could be subject to a
felony and a fine, if convicted.66 There are at least two factors, and likely many more, that make African American men more vulnerable to
experiencing criminal justice impacts relating to marijuana possession. The first factor that contributes to disparate arrest and conviction rates of
African American men for low-level drug offenses, such as marijuana, is the poor socioeconomic conditions that entice these men to enter the drug
trade. Indeed, black
men between the ages of sixteen to twenty-four have one of the highest rates
of unemployment amongst any other group on a national level.67 Young black men have
tremendous difficulty obtaining jobs that pay a living wage, which in turn make it difficult to support their families
through legitimate means.68 The effects of generational poverty, racial discrimination, and
marginalization of African American men have led to perpetuating cycles of poverty, intolerable rates of
incarceration, high rates of unemployment, lower levels of educational attainment, and ongoing disengagement with mainstream
(____) Legalizing weed doesn’t fix the problem, in fact it just makes it worse by making
elites rich while people of color are still policed and incarcerated
Clutch Magazine 2014
(“Legal Weed: White People Get Rich, Black People Get To Stay In Prison”
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/07/legal-weed-white-people-get-rich-black-people-get-stay-prison/)
During the March 6 conversation, Alexander went on to further point out the fact that black men
and boys have been public enemy number one, when it comes to the war on drugs. “Black
men and boys” have been the target of the war on drugs’ racist policies—stopped, frisked
and disturbed—“often before they’re old enough to vote,” she said. “We arrest these kids at
young ages, saddle them with criminal records, throw them in cages, and then release them
into a parallel social universe in which the very civil and human rights supposedly won in
the Civil Rights movement no longer apply to them for the rest of their lives,” Alexander said.
“They can be discriminated against [when it comes to] employment, housing, access to education,
public benefits. They’re locked into a permanent second-class status for life. And we’ve done this in
precisely the communities that were most in need of our support.”
26
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: War on Drugs Stop Criminals
(___)
(___) Even if that is true in theory, the war on drugs fails and creates more violence and
tension
Dumke 14 Mick, Chicago Reader, 4-7, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-bust-blackspot-possession-after-decriminalization/Content?oid=13004240
Police say there are good reasons to get some pot possessors off the street. Marijuana
dealing remains a highly profitable business, and tension among competing sales operations can
lead to violence. In custody, some lower-level dealers provide police with information that leads to
violent traffickers or gang leaders. Still, that's not always the case—especially when officers
sent to saturate high-crime areas are rookies or only assigned there temporarily. "Guess
who we end up stopping?" says the veteran officer. "The guy who's walking to the store for
some soda pop, or a lady who turns out to be a nurse." Or they're simply pot users or
sellers who aren't tied to large-scale operations. Sending them into the criminal justice
system can push them down a dangerous path while exacerbating tensions within the
community.
27
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Utilitarianism (1/3)
(___)
(___) Challenging institutional racism is a prior ethical question— it makes violence
structurally inevitable and foundationally negates morality making their utilitarianism
arguments incoherent
Albert Memmi 2k, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ U of Paris, Naiteire, Racism, Translated by
Steve Martinot, p. 163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission,
probably never achieved. Yet, for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without
surcease and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism; one must not
even let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold
means to augment the bestial part in us and in other people, which is to diminish what is
human. To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice,
and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live.
it is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which man is not himself
an outsider relative to someone else?. Racism illustrates, in sum, the inevitable negativity of
the condition of the dominated that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human
condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is
nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animosity to humanity. In
that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that one’s
moral conduit only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other
choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly
speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of
a human order, for which racism is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One
cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism, because racism
signifies the exclusion of the other, and his or her subjection to violence and domination.
From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is ‘the truly
capital sin. It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsels
respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical
morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other
suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in banishing
injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There
are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is
permissible. Bur no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will
be reversed. All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably
smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect.
28
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Utilitarianism (2/3)
(___) The judge should prioritize the impacts on minority populations – typical risk
assessment tends to exclude the voices of the oppressed and normalizes violence against
these people
Mills 97 – Associate Prof of Philosophy @ U Illinois, Chicago (Charles-; The Racial Contract)
The Racial Contract has always been recognized by nonwhites as the real determinant of (most)
white moral/political practice and thus as the real moral/political agreement to be challenged . If the
epistemology of the signatories, the agents, of the Racial Contract requires evasion and denial
of the realities of race, the epistemology of the victims, the objects, of the Racial Contract is,
unsurprisingly, focused on these realities themselves. (So there is a reciprocal relationship, the
Racial Contract tracking white moral/political consciousness, the reaction to the Racial Contract
tracking nonwhite moral/political consciousness and stimulating a puzzled investigation of that
white moral/political consciousness .) The term "standpoint theory" is now routinely used to signify
the notion that in understanding the workings of a system of oppression, a perspective from
the bottom up is more likely to be accurate than one from the top down. What is involved here,
then, is a "racial" version of standpoint theory, a perspectival cognitive advantage that is grounded
in the phenomenological experience of the disjuncture between official (white) reality and
actual (nonwhite) experience, the "double-consciousness" of which W. E . B . Du Bois spoke .48
This differential racial experience generates an alternative moral and political perception of
social reality which is encapsulated in the insight from the black American folk tradition I have
used as the epigraph of this book : the central realization, summing up the Racial Contract, that
"when white people say Justice,' they mean 'Just Us."' Nonwhites have always (at least in first
encounters) been bemused or astonished by the invisibility of the Racial Contract to whites, the
fact that whites have routinely talked in universalist terms even when it has been quite clear that
the scope has really been limited to themselves . Correspondingly, nonwhites, with no vested
material or psychic interest in the Racial Contract-objects rather than subjects of it, viewing
it from outside rather than inside, subpersons rather than persons-are (at least before
ideological conditioning) able to see its terms quite clearly. Thus the hypocrisy of the racial polity
is most transparent to its victims . The corollary is that nonwhite interest in white moral and political
theory has necessarily been focused less on the details of the particular competing moral
and political candidates (utilitarianism versus deontology versus natural rights theory;
liberalism versus conservatism versus socialism) than in the unacknowledged Racial Contract
that has usually framed their functioning. The variable that makes the most difference to the fate
of nonwhites is not the fine- or even coarse-grained conceptual divergences of the different
theories themselves (all have their Herrenvolk variants), but whether or not the subclause invoking
the Racial Contract, thus putting the theory into Herrenvolk mode, has been activated . The details
of the moral theories thus become less important than the metatheory, the Racial Contract, in
which they are embedded.
29
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Utilitarianism (3/3)
(___) You should reject impacts that only focus on extinction and death, the world is already
violent towards people of color and a focus on “nuclear war” or other big impacts masks
the oppression of white supremacy by painting it as not as important
OMOLADE 84 City College Center for Worker Education in New York City
Barbara-a historian of black women for the past twenty years and an organizer in both the women’s and civil rights/black power movements; Women
of Color and the Nuclear Holocaust; WOMEN’S STUDIES QUARTERLY, Vol. 12., No. 2, Teaching about Peace, War, and Women in the Military,
Summer, p. 12; http://www.jstor.org/stable/4004305
In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released a report on the
effects of nuclear war that concludes that, in a general nuclear war between the United
States and the Soviet Union, 25 to 100 million people would be killed. This is approximately
the same number of African people who died between 1492 and 1890 as a result of the
African slave trade to the New World. The same federal report also comments on the
destruction of urban housing that would cause massive shortages after a nuclear war, as
well as on the crops that would be lost, causing massive food shortages. Of course, for
people of color the world over, starvation is already a common problem, when, for example,
a nation’s crops are grown for export rather than to feed its own people. And the housing
of people of color throughout the world’s urban areas is already blighted and inhumane:
families live in shacks, shanty towns, or on the streets; even in the urban areas of North
America, the poor may live without heat or running water. For people of color, the world as
we knew it ended centuries ago. Our world, with its own languages, customs and ways,
ended. And we are only now beginning to see with increasing clarity that our task is to
reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuild it in our own image. The “death culture” we
live in has convinced many to be more concerned with death than with life, more willing to
demonstrate for “survival at any cost” than to struggle for liberty and peace with dignity.
Nuclear disarmament becomes a safe issue when it is not linked to the daily and historic
issues of racism, to the ways in which people of color continue to be murdered. Acts of
war, nuclear holocausts, and genocide have already been declared on our jobs, our
housing, our schools, our families, and our lands. As women of color, we are warriors, not
pacifists. We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will continue to die as a people. We
have fought in people’s wars in China, in Cuba, in Guinea-Bissau, and in such struggles as the
civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and in countless daily encounters with
landlords, welfare departments, and schools. These struggles are not abstractions, but the
only means by which we have gained the ability to eat and to provide for the future of our
people. We wonder who will lead the battle for nuclear disarmament with the vigor and clarity
that women of color have learned from participating in other struggles. Who will make the
political links among racism, sexism, imperialism, cultural integrity, and nuclear arsenals
and housing? Who will stand up?
30
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Solutions Bad (1/3)
(___)
(___) Mass incarceration is the cardinal scourge of black masses debilitates resistance
movements—we must use every tactic to challenge it including legal reform
Williams 68 [March 1968, Robert F. Williams was a civil rights leader and author, best known for
serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early
1960s. Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton cited Williams’s Negroes with Guns as a major
inspiration. “Reaction Without Positive Change”, The Crusader, Volume 9, Number 4,
http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Robert_F_Williams/513.RobertFWilli
ams.Crusader.March.1968.pdf]
It is because it is an instrument of social reaction in the employ of reactionaries hell-bent on
preserving an ante-bellum and vulturous power structure frenetically trying to maintain its
encircled and battered position. Tyrants do not change of themselves. The pressure of the
people stimulated by the enlightenment derived from their social being is the driving wheel
that propels the vehicle of change. The Black and the powerless, who face the wrath of socalled Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, must come to realize the futility of leaving their fate to the
rule of law as implemented by puppet judges who pander to the savage emotions of a cold
blooded aristocracy. The true power of the state derives from the people. The weakness of the
people in a confrontation with state tyranny evolves from the apathy, confusion, demoralization,
disunity and ignorance of their own power. All over degenerate and fascist America today the most
complimentary citizens of a civilized society are being railroaded to prison, are being removed from
a decadent and sheepish society that is in dire need of highly moral and resistant fiber. These
courageous and upright citizens constitute the last thin line between regression and progression.
They are the sparse in numbers but firm pillars that so precariously prevent the society from
plunging into the tragic and chaotic depth of despotic fascism. America's jails are teaming with
principled Black Nationalists, freedom fighters, war resisters, peace advocates, resisters of
false arrest, those forced into crime as a means of survival, the penniless and powerless
guilty of minor infractions, but unable to pay the court's tribute money and the state's
bribery. America's racist courts have assumed the despotic posture of institutionalized lynch mobs
enjoying the sanctimonious solicitude of the state's ritualistic buffoonery. This inhumane and
oppressive situation can only be rectified by an aroused, united and determined citizenry.
The power of the enraged masses must be arrayed against this Anglo=Saxon kangarooism.
31
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Solutions Bad (2/3)
(___)
(___) Reformism is effective and brings revolutionary change closer rather than pushing it
away
Richard Delgado 9, self-appointed Minority scholar, Chair of Law at the University of Alabama
Law School, J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, his books have won eight national
book prizes, including six Gustavus Myers awards for outstanding book on human rights in North
America, the American Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize
nomination. Professor Delgado’s teaching and writing focus on race, the legal profession, and
social change, 2009, “Does Critical Legal Studies Have What Minorities Want, Arguing about Law”,
p. 588-590
2. The CLS critique of piecemeal reform Critical scholars reject the idea of piecemeal
reform. Incremental change, they argue, merely postpones the wholesale reformation that
must occur to create a decent society. Even worse, an unfair social system survives by
using piecemeal reform to disguise and legitimize oppression. Those who control the
system weaken resistance by pointing to the occasional concession to, or periodic court
victory of, a black plaintiff or worker as evidence that the system is fair and just. In fact, Crits
believe that teaching the common law or using the case method in law school is a disguised means
of preaching incrementalism and thereby maintaining the current power structure.“ To avoid this,
CLS scholars urge law professors to abandon the case method, give up the effort to find rationality
and order in the case law, and teach in an unabashedly political fashion. The CLS critique of
piecemeal reform is familiar, imperialistic and wrong. Minorities know from bitter experience
that occasional court victories do not mean the Promised Land is at hand. The critique is
imperialistic in that it tells minorities and other oppressed peoples how they should interpret
events affecting them. A court order directing a housing authority to disburse funds for
heating in subsidized housing may postpone the revolution, or it may not. In the meantime,
the order keeps a number of poor families warm. This may mean more to them than it does
to a comfortable academic working in a warm office. It smacks of paternalism to assert that
the possibility of revolution later outweighs the certainty of heat now, unless there is
evidence for that possibility. The Crits do not offer such evidence. Indeed, some incremental
changes may bring revolutionary changes closer, not push them further away. Not all small
reforms induce complacency; some may whet the appetite for further combat. The welfare
family may hold a tenants‘ union meeting in their heated living room. CLS scholars‘ critique
of piecemeal reform often misses these possibilities, and neglects the question of whether
total change, when it comes, will be what we want.
32
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Solutions Bad (3/3)
(___) Legal change has resulted in racial advancement and more is still possible
Randall Kennedy 12, Harvard Law Professor, Race, Crime, and the Law, Knopf Doubleday
Publishing Group, pp. 388-389
True, it is sometimes genuinely difficult to determine an appropriate remedial response. The
proper way to address that difficulty, however, is to acknowledge and grapple with it, not bury
it beneath unbelievable assertions that, in fact, no real problem exists. Whitewashing racial
wrongs (especially while simultaneously proclaiming that courts are doing everything reasonably
possible to combat racially invidious government action) corrupts officials and jades onlookers,
nourishing simplistic, despairing, and defeatist critiques of the law that are profoundly
destructive. The second impression that I want to leave with readers should serve as an antidote
to these overwrought, defeatist critiques by acknowledging that the administration of criminal
law has changed substantially for the better over the past half century and that there is
reason to believe that, properly guided, it can be improved even more. Today there are more
formal and informal protections against racial bias than ever before, both in terms of the
protections accorded to blacks against criminality and the treatment accorded to black
suspects, defendants, and convicts. That deficiencies, large deficiencies, remain is clear. But
comparing racial policies today to those that prevailed in 1940 or 1960 or even 1980 should
expose the fallacy of asserting that nothing substantial has been changed for the better.
This point is worth stressing because of the prevalence and prominence of pessimistic
thinking about the race question in American life. Some commentators maintain, in all
seriousness, that there has been no significant improvement in the overall fortunes of black
Americans during the past half century, that advances that appear to have been made are
merely cosmetic, and that the United States is doomed to remain a pigmentocracy. This
pessimistic strain often turns paranoid and apocalyptic in commentary about the
administration of criminal law. It is profoundly misleading, however, to focus exclusively on
the ugliest aspects of the American legal order. Doing so conceals real achievements: the
Reconstruction Constitutional Amendments, the Reconstruction civil rights laws, Strauder v.
Alabama, Dempsey v. Moore, Brown v. Mississippi, Powell v. Alabama, Norris v. Alabama,
Batson v. Kentucky, the resuscitation of Reconstruction by the civil rights movement, the
changing demographics of the bench, bar, and police departments—in sum, the
stigmatization (albeit incomplete) of invidious racial bias. Neglecting these achievements
robs them of support. Recent sharp attacks upon basic guarantees bequeathed by the New
Deal ought to put everyone on notice of the perils of permitting social accomplishments to
lose their rightful stature in the public's estimation.
33
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Level Surveillance
(___)
(___) State activities in the drug war come from the DEA
DEA 2015—United States Drug Enforcement Agency, “DEA Programs: State and Local Task
Forces”
http://www.dea.gov/ops/taskforces.shtml
This cooperative effort between the DEA and local law enforcement agencies actually began
in 1970, before the establishment of the DEA, with a pilot task force created in New York
City by the former BNDD. The first task force was comprised of investigators from major state
and local regional agencies, primarily the New York City Police Department and the New York
State, along with BNDD personnel. Due to the complexity of drug problems in the region and
the varied levels of drug trafficking, the New York City metropolitan area was ideal for
federal, state, and local initiatives. The success of the New York Task Force provided the
impetus for a combined creation of DEA’s State and Local Task Force Program. As an
inducement to participate, DEA began to pay investigative overtime for the state and local
task force officers, as well as investigative expenses such as payments to informants, “buy
money” to purchase contraband, undercover vehicles, and surveillance equipment. When
State and Local Task Force funding was not available for new task forces. DEA Headquarters
gave approval to establish an “informal” task force using existing divisional funds. Since
these ad hoc task forces operated informally, no system existed to track their progress or to
include them in DEA’s budget planning. Therefore, the Provisional Task Force Program was
created as a way to plan ahead, using limited funding prudently.
34
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Status Quo Solves
(___)
(___)
Drug reform has been a myth since Nixon—They protect it for profits
Whitaker 2013—Morgan Whitaker is from MSNBC, September 24, “How profits help drive the war
on drugs” http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/how-profits-help-drive-the-war-drugs
So why pour money into a failed system? One factor might just be profit. During the Reagan
administration, the government started incentivizing drug arrests by handing out grants to
police departments fighting drug crimes. An arrest in a state like Wisconsin could bank a city or
county an extra $153. In 34 years in the Seattle Police Department, Norm Stamper learned
about those incentives first hand, and he believes they are “corrupting the system.” “What
we have seen with this drug war are insane numbers of Americans being arrested for
nonviolent, very low level drug offenses, in the tens of millions of numbers, and what do we
have to show for it?” he asked on Tuesday’s PoliticsNation. He said drugs are more readily
available than when Nixon “first declared war against them.” “Make no mistake, he was
really declaring war against his fellow Americans. He was declaring war particularly against
young people, poor people, and people of color.” Stamper takes issue with the prison industry,
which has seen major growth due to low level drug offenders, compared to relatively little growth
from more violent offenders. “The prison industrial complex, the law enforcement, drug
enforcement industry, the cartels themselves, heavy street traffickers, are deeply invested
in the status quo,” Stamper said. “They are very much invested in making sure, by protecting
and expanding their drug markets, often times through violent means, that they will
continue to reap the enormous, untaxed, obscene profits associated with illicit commerce.”
35
War on Drugs Affirmative
Case Debate
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Status Quo Solves: DEA Policy
(___)
(___)
No major reforms—The DEA sees profiling as effective
Hicks 2015—Josh Hicks reports for the Washington Post, January 30, “Report criticizes DEA’s
poor monitoring for racial bias in ‘cold consent’ stops”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/01/30/dea-version-of-stop-and-frisk-isbarely-monitored-for-racial-bias/
The review also found the DEA provides little instruction or oversight for the stops. For
instance, only 29 percent of its task force members and 47 percent of supervisors had
attended training, and most agents were unaware of reporting requirements that could help
determine whether officers use the method improperly. Nusrat Choudhury, an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union’s racial-justice program, said the cold-consent program could easily
lead to problems. “This type of highly discretionary law-enforcement technique provides an
opening for implicit biases to influence the officers’ decisions and actions,” she said. “All
people are vulnerable to biases.” The IG launched its probe after the Pentagon attorney filed a
complaint, saying she faced humiliating and aggressive questioning. She was not identified in
Thursday’s report. A DEA spokesman said the agency concurs with the IG reforms, but the
agency also said in a letter that cold-consent encounters are one of many tools it uses to
disrupt drug-trafficking networks. It added that it can’t legally force an individual to provide
demographic information without an arrest. “It would not be in DEA’s best interest to use its
best guesstimate in determining the race during an encounter, which may not result in an
accurate statistic,” the letter said.
36
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Topicality – Domestic Surveillance = Terrorism (1/2)
(___)
(___) We meet – war on drugs is at the heart of the domestic surveillance – every
surveillance test case in recent history is related to the war on drugs
Greenberg, senior reporter on privacy and security issues, 15 Andy, April 15, 2015, "Want to
See Domestic Spying’s Future? Follow the Drug War," www.wired.com/2015/04/want-seedomestic-spyings-future-follow-drug-war/
THE NSA ISN’T the only three-letter agency that’s been quietly collecting Americans’ data
on a mind-boggling scale. The country learned this week that the Drug Enforcement Agency
spied on all of us first, and with even fewer privacy protections by some measures. But if
anyone is surprised that the DEA’s mass surveillance programs have been just as
aggressive as the NSA’s, they shouldn’t be. The early targets that signal shifts in America’s
domestic surveillance techniques aren’t activists and political dissidents, as some privacy
advocates argue—or terrorists, as national security hawks would claim. They’re drug
dealers. The DEA’s newly revealed bulk collection of billions of American phone records on
calls to 116 countries preceded the NSA’s similar program by years and may have even
helped to inspire it, as reported in USA Today’s story Wednesday. And the program serves as a
reminder that most of the legal battles between government surveillance efforts and the
Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections over the last decades have played out first on the
front lines of America’s War on Drugs. Every surveillance test case in recent history, from
beepers to cell phones to GPS tracking to drones—and now the feds’ attempts to puncture
the bubble of cryptographic anonymity around Dark Web sites like the Silk Road—began
with a narcotics investigation. “If you asked me last week who was doing this [kind of mass
surveillance] other than the NSA, the DEA would be my first guess,” says Chris Soghoian, the lead
technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The War on Drugs and the surveillance
state are joined at the hip.” It’s no secret that drug cases overwhelmingly dominate American law
enforcement’s use of surveillance techniques. The Department of Justice annually reports to
the judiciary how many wiretaps it seeks warrants for, broken down by the type of crime
being investigated. In 2013, the last such report, a staggering 88 percent of the 3,576
reported wiretaps were for narcotics. That’s compared to just 132 wiretaps for homicide and
assault combined, for instance, and a mere eight for corruption cases.
37
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Topicality – Domestic Surveillance = Terrorism (2/2)
(___) Counter-interpretation – domestic surveillance is categorized by means of
communication not content, it is not realistic or predictable to limit surveillance to only
terrorism
Stray, 2013 (Jonathan Stray, “FAQ: What You Need to Know About the NSA’s Surveillance
Programs”, http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq, August 5th, 2013)
There have been a lot of news stories about NSA surveillance programs following the leaks of
secret documents by Edward Snowden. But it seems the more we read, the less clear things
are. We've put together a detailed snapshot of what's known and what's been reported
where. What information does the NSA collect and how? We don’t know all of the different
types of information the NSA collects, but several secret collection programs have been
revealed: A record of most calls made in the U.S., including the telephone number of the
phones making and receiving the call, and how long the call lasted. This information is
known as “metadata” and doesn’t include a recording of the actual call (but see below). This
program was revealed through a leaked secret court order instructing Verizon to turn over all such
information on a daily basis. Other phone companies, including AT&T and Sprint, also reportedly
give their records to the NSA on a continual basis. All together, this is several billion calls per day.
Email, Facebook posts and instant messages for an unknown number of people, via PRISM,
which involves the cooperation of at least nine different technology companies. Google,
Facebook, Yahoo and others have denied that the NSA has “direct access” to their servers, saying
they only release user information in response to a court order. Facebook has revealed that, in the
last six months of 2012, they handed over the private data of between 18,000 and 19,000 users to
law enforcement of all types -- including local police and federal agencies, such as the FBI, Federal
Marshals and the NSA. Massive amounts of raw Internet traffic The NSA intercepts huge
amounts of raw data, and stores billions of communication records per day in its databases. Using
the NSA’s XKEYSCORE software, analysts can see “nearly everything a user does on the
Internet” including emails, social media posts, web sites you visit, addresses typed into
Google Maps, files sent, and more. Currently the NSA is only authorized to intercept Internet
communications with at least one end outside the U.S., though the domestic collection program
used to be broader. But because there is no fully reliable automatic way to separate domestic from
international communications, this program also captures some amount of U.S. citizens’ purely
domestic Internet activity, such as emails, social media posts, instant messages, the sites you visit
and online purchases you make.
38
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Topicality – We Meet Extensions
(___)
(___) The heart of domestic surveillance is the war on drugs
Greenberg, senior reporter on privacy and security issues, 15 Andy, April 15, 2015, "Want to
See Domestic Spying’s Future? Follow the Drug War," www.wired.com/2015/04/want-seedomestic-spyings-future-follow-drug-war/
With all those cases in mind, the DEA’s now-defunct bulk collection of Americans’ phone
metadata fits squarely into a long and storied history of drug investigators using and
abusing their surveillance powers. That doesn’t make privacy advocates like it any better.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch filed a lawsuit earlier this
week to make sure that the program is completely terminated rather than merely hidden or
suspended, considering the 20-year secrecy around the DEA’s phone metadata collection.
39
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Topicality – Counter-Interpretation Extensions
(___)
(___) Domestic surveillance includes electronic surveillance independent of the content –
the affs form of restricting War on Drugs surveillance ought to be included in the topic
Small, Lieutenant in the United States Air Force Academy, 2008 (Matthew Small, United States
Air Force Academy, “His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil Liberties and
Executive Power during Times of National Crisis”,
cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small, 2008)
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: [T]he acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the
contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a
particular, known United States person who is in the United States, if the contents are
acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a
person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law
enforcement purposes; Adhering to the above definition allows for a focused analysis of one
part of President Bush’s domestic surveillance policy as its implementation relates to the
executive’s ability to abridge certain civil liberties. However, since electronic surveillance did not
become an issue of public concern until the 1920s, there would seem to be a problem with the
proposed analysis
40
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Organized Crime
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- Marijuana Legalization
now
(___)
(___) Their impacts are empirically denied or will never happen – marijuana is being
legalized in Colorado and shows the easing up of the War on Drugs has a negligible impact.
David Downs 12, writes the syndicated weekly column “Legalization Nation” for the SF Gate,
11/2/12,Think Tank: ‘U.S. Weed Will Kick Mexican Weed’s Butt If Any States Legalize Pot’,
blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2012/11/02/u-s-weed-will-kick-mexican-weeds-butt-if-any-stateslegalize-pot/
A new study released by a respected Mexican think tank finds that cannabis legalization in
Colorado, Washington or Oregon this year will lead to such huge price drops and quality
increases that U.S. cannabis will completely muscle Mexican pot out the U.S. market. The
Mexico Institute for Competitiveness’ ‘Possible Impact of legalizing marihuana in the U.S.‘ finds
that cheap, legal, high-quality sensimilla would seap out of whatever state legalized it, and
undercut Mexican “commercial” weed across the country. Cheaper, better, U.S. cannabis
would lead to “significant decline in revenues from drug trafficking in Mexican criminal
organizations,” IMCO states. “United States is currently a net importer of marijuana. But [if] one
or more states [legalized, the U.S.] could meet most of its domestic demand with domestic
production. If this scenario materializes, Mexico would be facing the largest structural shock
suffered by drug traffickers since the massive arrival of cocaine in the late eighties,” they conclude.
41
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Organized Crime
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- Kingpin Focus
(___) Ending the War on Drugs allows the government to focus on getting the kingpins of
the cartels
Carlsen, Director of CIP, 2010 Laura, director of the CIP Americas Program, “How Legalizing
Marijuana Would Weaken Mexican Drug Cartels,” Nov 3, http://www.cipamericas.org/wpcontent/uploads/wp-post-to-pdf-cache/1/how-legalizing-marijuana-would-weaken-mexican-drugcartels.pdf
In the months leading up to the vote, opponents of legalization issued a barrage of confused and¶
contradictory arguments aimed at convincing voters to ignore a basic common-sense fact: legal
sourcing erodes the black-market profits of organized crime. But organized crime is a
business. Reducing demand through providing legal sources would hurt that business and
cut deeply into resources used to recruit youth, buy off politicians and purchase weapons.¶
The most recent argument thrown out in the anti-Prop. 19 campaign, claims that the California
marijuana¶ market is insignificant to Mexican drug traffickers.¶ That argument was blown out of the
water on October 18 when the Mexican Army and police seized 134¶ tons of marijuana, wrapped
and ready to be smuggled from Tijuana across the border. The huge cache¶ was estimated to be
worth at least $338 million dollars on the street. Mexican authorities guessed that it¶ was owned by
the nation's most powerful drug-trafficking organization, the Sinaloa Cartel.¶ Even if much of that is
distributed to other states, the sheer size of the potential shipment shows that the¶ U.S. marijuana
market for Mexican traffickers, calculated at $20 billion a year, is well worth fighting for.¶ Since
before Prop. 19 came along, reports showed that Mexico's drug cartels were concerned about
how U.S. production and legalization of medical marijuana cut into their profits.¶ Prohibition
creates the underground market that generates their economic, political and military
strength. With the drop in income from marijuana sales, cartels have less money for buying
arms and politicians, or recruiting young people into the trade.¶ The drug cartels also
consider the marijuana black market worth killing for. Just days after the historic bust, thirteen
young men were massacred at a drug rehabilitation center. An anonymous voice came over¶
police radio saying the act was "a taste of Juarez" and that up to 135 people could be murdered in¶
retaliation for the bust--one per ton.¶ Although calculating Mexican cartel earnings from marijuana
sales will always be a guessing game, it's¶ indisputable that as long as it's illegal every penny of
those earnings goes into the pockets of organized¶ crime. From the peasant who converts his land
from corn to pot to feed his family, to the truckdriver who¶ takes on a bonus cargo, to the Mexican
and U.S. border officials who open "windows" in international¶ customs controls, to the youth
gangs who sell in U.S. cities--all are sucked into a highly organized and¶ brutal system of
contraband.¶ Legalization in part of the world's leading market would take a huge chunk out
of this transnational business.¶
42
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Organized Crime
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage- War on Drugs not key
(___)
(___) The war on drugs aren’t necessary nor do they solve – there are a whole host of
alternate causes
Riggs, 12 Mike, Staff writer, “The 3 Worst Arguments for Legalizing Marijuana,”
http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/23/the-three-worst-arguments-for-legalizing,
The election of Mexican President Felipe Calderon in 2006 ushered in a new era of prohibitionfueled drug violence. Six years and 50,000 drug-war deaths later, the argument that repealing
marijuana prohibition could stem the violence in Mexico and along the U.S. border is
ubiquitous. The claim was a major selling point for Proposition 19 in California, which would have
legalized marijuana and subjected its sale to taxation and regulation, and has been made
repeatedly by drug reform advocates in the two years since. “We have created an illegal
marketplace with such mind-boggling profits that no enforcement measures will ever overcome
the motivation, resources and determination of the cartels,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate
Gary Johnson wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Washington Times. Legalizing pot, he added, would
deny the cartels “their largest profit center and dramatically reduce not only the role of the
United States in their business plans, but also the motivation for waging war along our
southern border.” But there are objections to that claim. In October 2010, the RAND
Corporation released a study saying that Mexican cartels derived only 16 percent of their
revenue from marijuana. (As pointed out by NORML, that number conflicted with the ONDCP's
estimate that 61 percent of cartel revenue comes from marijuana.) In June 2011, Mexico analyst
Sylvia Longmire argued that cartels have diversified to the point that legalizing marijuana
might dent their war chests, but it won’t stop them; they’d still make money stealing oil from
pipelines, pirating and selling contraband intellectual property, extorting small businesses,
bribing politicians, ransoming kidnap victims, manufacturing and moving harder drugs
such as cocaine, heroin, and meth, and trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex
workers. In 2011, David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, emailed me with
objections to Longmire’s argument: “Some of the other criminal enterprises that cartels are
involved in (enterprises they've been able to enter because of having drug cash and organizations
built by drug cash) are less straightforwardly tied to demand, such as kidnapping for ransom, but
they have their limits—for all we know they are already doing as much of those things as they think
could be sustained, and the more profit they continue to make from drugs, the more money they
are going to invest in all kinds of enterprises, both illicit and licit.” “Will the cartels vanish from the
face of the earth because of marijuana legalization?" Borden continued. "Probably not. Would
even full legalization of all drugs accomplish that? Unclear.” That lack of clarity is exactly why
marijuana reformers should be careful when promising what legalizing pot can and can’t do for
Mexico. The war on drugs has weakened the country’s political institutions, corrupted its military
and police forces, and devastated its economy. While pot legalization in the U.S. would allow users
to divest from the cartels' brutality, pitching marijuana legalization as anything other than a baby
step toward peace and stability in Mexico puts drug reformers on tenuous grounds.
43
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Organized Crime
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Organized Crime Disadvantage– Ending War on Drugs
Stops Cartels
(___)
(___) Ending the war on drugs moves the United States from a prohibition model to a public
health one which hurts cartels even more and stops instability
Robelo, Research Coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance, 13 Drug Policy Alliance research
coordinator Daniel, "Demand Reduction or Redirection? Channeling Illicit Drug Demand towards a
Regulated Supply to Diminish Violence in Latin America," Oregon Law Review, 91 Or. L. Rev.
1227, 2013, l/n
It is also impossible to foresee how regulation would affect levels of violence. Some analysts
believe a short-term increase in violence is possible (as competition over a smaller market could
intensify), but that violence in the longer term will decline. n106 Some analysts point out that
organized crime may further diversify into other activities, such as extortion and kidnapping,
though these have been shown to be considerably less profitable than drug trafficking. As
one scholar [*1249] notes, given the profitability of the drug trade, "it would take roughly 50,000
kidnappings to equal 10% of cocaine revenues from the U.S. n107 While the American mafia
certainly diversified into other criminal endeavors after the Repeal of alcohol Prohibition,
homicide rates nevertheless declined dramatically. n108 Combining marijuana regulation with
medical regulatory models for heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine could strike a major blow to
the corrosive economic power of violent trafficking organizations, diminishing their ability to
perpetrate murder, hire recruits, purchase weapons, corrupt officials, operate with impunity, and
terrorize societies. Moreover, these approaches promise concrete results - potentially significant
reductions in DTO revenues - unlike all other strategies that Mexico or the United States have tried
to date. n109 Criminal organizations would still rely on other activities for their income, but
they would be left weaker and less of a threat to security. Furthermore, the United States
and Latin American governments would save resources currently wasted on prohibition
enforcement and generate new revenues in taxes - resources which could be applied more
effectively towards confronting violence and other crimes that directly threaten public safety.
n110
44
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Organized Crime
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Organized Crime – War on Drugs Isn’t Key Extensions
(___)
(___) Other crimes make them stronger
Beittel, 13 June, Analyst in Latin American affairs, “CRS Report for Congress¶ Prepared for Members and
Committees of Congress¶ Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations:¶ Source and Scope of the Violence,”
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf, Vitz
Another emerging factor has been the criminal diversification of the DTOs. In addition to
selling¶ illegal drugs, they have branched into other profitable crimes such as kidnapping,
assassination¶ for hire, auto theft, controlling prostitution, extortion, money-laundering,
software piracy,¶ resource theft, and human smuggling. The surge in violence due to interand intra-cartel conflict¶ over lucrative drug smuggling routes has been accompanied by an
increase in kidnapping for¶ ransom and other crimes. According to recent es¶ timates,
kidnappings in Mexico have increased¶ by 188% since 2007, armed robbery by 47%, and extortion
by 101%.¶ 98¶ Some believe¶ diversification may be evidence of organizational vitality and
growth. Others contend that¶ diversification signals that U.S. and Mexican drug enforcement
measures are cutting into profits¶ from drug trafficking, or constitutes a response to shifting U.S.
drug consumption patterns.¶ 99¶ The¶ growing public condemnation of the DTOs may also be
stimulated by their diversification into¶ street crime, which causes more harm to average Mexican
civilians than intra- and inter-DTO¶ violence related to conflicts over drug trafficking.
Because the DTOs have diversified, many analysts now refer to them as transnational
criminal¶ organizations (TCOs), as organized crime groups, or as mafias.¶ 100¶ Others
maintain that much of¶ their non-drug criminal activity is in service of the central drug trafficking
business.¶ 101¶ Whatever¶ the label, no one has an accurate way to assess how much of the
DTOs’ income is earned from¶ their non-drug activities. Los Zetas are one of the most
diversified DTOs. Their satellite¶ businesses include the theft of petroleum from the stateowned oil company PEMEX, product¶ piracy, and human smuggling, as well as extortion,
money laundering, and robbery.¶ 102¶ In July¶ 2011, the Obama Administration released a¶
Strategy to Combat¶ Transnational Organized Crime¶ ,¶ citing the Mexican DTOs as some of its
target subjects.¶ 103¶ On July 25, the White House issued an¶ executive order that named four
groups around the world that presented transnational organized¶ crime threats to U.S. national
security. Not surprisingly, Los Zetas were identified for their¶ diverse criminal activities and their
propensity to commit mass murder. Some analysts have¶ questioned why Los Zetas were singled
out, when Sinaloa and other Mexican DTOs are also¶ known to be significantly involved in other
forms of crime
45
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
State Decriminalization Counterplan Answers (1/3)
(___)
(___) Solvency deficit – decriminalization fails to lessen the impacts of policing on
communities of color – New York decriminalization proves
Burns, associate editor, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable
Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
What impact will marijuana legalization have on the War on Drugs as a whole? David J. Leonard:
Any changes in the War on Drugs will require continued organizing and agitation, because
history has shown that one step forward has also resulted in two steps back [for]
communities of color. New York decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That clearly did not lead
to the end of the War on Drugs in New York, or lessen its effects on communities of color.
Instead, the way the law was written provided the foundation for stop-and-frisk, because the
law made it a misdemeanor for marijuana to be in public view, which basically fostered
incentives to stop blacks and Latinos and tell them to empty their pockets. So I have a
number of concerns about the impact of these reforms on the War on Drugs. To give just one
other example: Does decriminalization apply to those who are on probation and being drugtested?
46
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
State Decriminalization Counterplan Answers (2/3)
(___)
(___) the counterplan doesn’t challenge the underlying racist ideology that is used to police
communities of colors – it still maintains the war on drug efforts more broadly which mean
people still get policed – decriminalization efforts now prove minorities still get targeted
Dumke 14 Mick, Chicago Reader, 4-7, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-bust-blackspot-possession-after-decriminalization/Content?oid=13004240
The racial grass gap hasn't narrowed a bit. Two years after Chicago moved to reform its
marijuana laws, a two-tiered system of justice remains firmly in place: while low-level pot
possession has essentially been decriminalized for residents of affluent neighborhoods, others are
routinely stopped and cuffed in an ongoing crackdown in poor, minority areas. The number of
arrests for marijuana possession citywide has dropped to its lowest level in 12 years. But police
continue to make an average of 44 arrests a day for misdemeanor possession, more than for any
other offense. And who's getting busted hasn't changed at all. Though studies have found
similar marijuana usage rates across racial groups, 78 percent of those arrested since August
2012 for carrying small amounts of pot were black, according to police department data.
Another 17 percent were Hispanic, and just 4 percent were white—virtually the same
breakdown as before the new possession ordinance went into effect. The reformed pot law
allows police to ticket people caught with less than 15 grams of marijuana instead of locking
them up. But police have seldom issued the tickets, formally known as administrative notices of
violation, or ANOVs. Just 1,725 marijuana-possession tickets were handed out between August
2012 and this February—while 20,844 arrests were made during the same period for possession of
less than 15 grams. And as with the arrests, most of the tickets—a whopping 70 percent—were
issued to African-Americans. Another 18 percent went to Hispanics, while whites received 11
percent. The figures were provided to the Reader through a request under the state's freedom of
information act. "This trend reflects the racial and ethnic disparities we see throughout the
system—from the point of ticketing or arrest, through admissions to the Cook County Jail or the
state's prison system," Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle said in a written statement.
"These are concerns I raised directly with the Mayor, and it's his obligation to work to make this
process more fair."
47
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
State Decriminalization Counterplan Answers (3/3)
(___)
(___) Permutation do both – decriminalization is such a successful strategy that it
diminishes the cartels’ revenue sufficiently and eliminates the necessity of the war on drugs
Duke, Yale professor of Law, 2009 professor of law at Yale (Steven, “Drugs: To Legalize or Not”
Wall Street Journal, 4/25, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB124061360462654683)
Even with popular support, legalizing and regulating the distribution of marijuana in the U.S.
would be neither easy nor quick. While imposing its prohibitionist will on the rest of the world for
nearly a century, the U.S. has created a network of treaties and international agreements
requiring drug prohibition. Those agreements would have to be revised. A sensible
intermediate step would be to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana and to
exercise benign neglect of American marijuana growers. Doing both would puncture the
market for imports from Mexico and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that
fuels the internecine warfare in Mexico.
(___) Solvency deficit – decriminalizing certain drugs without uprooting the war on drugs
more broadly means poor people turn to selling and using other drugs and still criminalized
for it
Burns, associate editor, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable
Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
MK: Another concern is whether, as the prices of marijuana start climbing [because of
legalization] and [poor] people turn to using other kinds of drugs, those drugs then get
painted as the worst possible drugs on the planet. The people who are doing the “worst”
drugs somehow always happen to be the most marginalized people within our culture.
That’s why it’s so important that we focus on uprooting the whole architecture of the War
on Drugs. If we’re not talking about the root issues of racism and classism, there are bound
to be unintended consequences.
48
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Decrim Counterplan – Solvency Deficit Extensions
(1/2)
(___)
(___) Police forces will continue to find ways to criminalize communities of color unless the
entire structure of the War on Drugs is challenged. Small changes will not make a
difference.
Burns, associate editor, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable
Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
: I’m very concerned about how this is going to play out on the ground. Young people who
are selling drugs because they have no other job opportunities are definitively not going to
be able to participate in the formal economy through the dispensaries. Is law enforcement
going to go after those young people 20 times harder now? AW: Yes, I am concerned that
distribution charges will increase. Whenever you make change, especially against law
enforcement’s status quo, it often finds a way to circumvent that change and maintain its
budget. But we haven’t seen anything that will lead us to believe that is taking place right now. And
you have to realize that these new marijuana laws are part of a much broader reform movement:
Colorado has also been revising its criminal justice laws. The first thing we did once Amendment
64 passed [in Colorado] was to lower criminal penalties for those [between the ages of] 18 and 20
possessing marijuana. So we are already working on preempting any type of net-widening. ITT:
What impact will marijuana legalization have on the War on Drugs as a whole? David J. Leonard:
Any changes in the War on Drugs will require continued organizing and agitation, because
history has shown that one step forward has also resulted in two steps back [for]
communities of color. New York decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That clearly did not lead to the
end of the War on Drugs in New York, or lessen its effects on communities of color. Instead, the
way the law was written provided the foundation for stop-and-frisk, because the law made it
a misdemeanor for marijuana to be in public view, which basically fostered incentives to
stop blacks and Latinos and tell them to empty their pockets. So I have a number of concerns
about the impact of these reforms on the War on Drugs. To give just one other example: Does
decriminalization apply to those who are on probation and being drug-tested? MK: Another concern
is whether, as the prices of marijuana start climbing [because of legalization] and [poor]
people turn to using other kinds of drugs, those drugs then get painted as the worst
possible drugs on the planet. The people who are doing the “worst” drugs somehow always
happen to be the most marginalized people within our culture. That’s why it’s so important
that we focus on uprooting the whole architecture of the War on Drugs. If we’re not talking
about the root issues of racism and classism, there are bound to be unintended
consequences.
49
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: State Decrim Counterplan – Solvency Deficit Extensions
(2/2)
(___) Empirically in Colorado, just removing criminal penalties doesn’t change the policing
Fleischer 13 – (Matthew, Jan 2 2013, “Weed Is Legal, but Prior Offenders Won’t Be Let Off the
Hook,” http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/02/no-relief-convicted
Modified for ableist language.
In the past 25 years, 210,000 marijuana-related arrests have been made in the state of
Colorado alone. Of that number, more than 50,000 took place between 2006 and 2010. So now
that Colorado has officially legalized the commercial sale and consumption of marijuana,
how many of those people arrested for previous weed crimes will be let out of prison? Or, if
they’ve already served their time, how many will have their marijuana crimes expunged from
their records, making it easier to get a job? The answer: Zero on all counts. In American
criminal justice, so goes the thinking, marijuana possession or distribution was against the law
when the crime was committed. The law is the law. Whether or not the old law was unpopular
or unjust is immaterial. Though there’s a certain cruel logic to this viewpoint, from a global
perspective it is an extreme outlier. The United States is one of the only countries in the world that
doesn’t guarantee what’s called “retroactive ameliorative relief” in sentencing. Meaning, when a law
is passed to ease or eliminate punishments for a specific crime, those already convicted of that
crime don’t necessarily receive the same relaxation or cessation of their sentence. “The United
States is one of only 22 countries that doesn’t guarantee retroactive ameliorative relief in
sentencing,” says Amanda Solter, Project Director of Human Rights and Criminal Sentencing
Reform Project for the University of San Francisco School of Law. “The only other countries that do
this are places like Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, South Sudan, and a handful of countries in the
Caribbean. Even Russia provides this right.” Though post-conviction relief varies from stateto-state in the U.S., amelioration typically needs to be explicitly specified by lawmakers for
it to take effect. In a political system paralyzed [affected] by the need of candidates to appear
tough on crime, this rarely happens. The Fair Sentencing Act, for instance, which passed the
U.S. Congress in 2010, eases penalties for the personal possession of crack cocaine.
However, even though this law was explicitly crafted to right the wrong of absurdly high
sentences for crack possession in comparison with other drugs, lawmakers made no effort to
ease the sentences of those already convicted. It gets worse. “Connecticut repealed the death
penalty and didn’t make it retroactive,” says Solter. “New Mexico has done the same. Two people
there are currently on Death Row. It seems obvious on some level, and yet that right doesn’t exist
here in the United States. It’s the world’s worst punishment, then you decide it doesn’t apply
retroactively? “South Africa, on the other hand, abolished the death penalty and made it retroactive
for 300 to 400 people on Death Row. Russia did the same in the ’90s and commuted the
sentences of roughly 700 people. These are tangible examples of where other countries are putting
[retroactive ameliorative relief] into practice.
50
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Racial Biases Continue
Extensions
(___)
(___) Racial biases will continue to exist and communities of color will get policed
Levine 13 Harry, Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City
University of New York. TNI, Vol. 15: Weed. 4/3, http://thenewinquiry.com/features/nationaldisgrace/
More and more we are finding that decriminalization as it is usually understood and practiced is
not a real solution — it does not fix this scandal. Under most forms of decriminalization,
police continue to stop and search people looking for marijuana, and they do so in the same
neighborhoods, targeting the same people. So decriminalization does nothing to address
the huge racial biases and disparities in the policing of pot possession.
51
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Administrative Tinkering
Extensions
(___)
(___) Absent challenging the entire racist foundation of the war on drugs, policing will
continue and law enforcement will figure out a way
Burns, associate editor, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable
Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
. African Americans are about three and a half times more likely to be arrested [in the United States
for marijuana-related offenses] than their white counterparts; Latinos are about two times more
likely. We’re setting a paradigm that hopefully many other states will follow. One worry has been
that the high price of legalized marijuana will encourage a black market and that arrests for
illegal distribution could actually increase. Mariame: I’m very concerned about how this is going
to play out on the ground. Young people who are selling drugs because they have no other
job opportunities are definitively not going to be able to participate in the formal economy
through the dispensaries. Is law enforcement going to go after those young people 20 times
harder now? Art : Yes, I am concerned that distribution charges will increase. Whenever you
make change, especially against law enforcement’s status quo, it often finds a way to
circumvent that change and maintain its budget. But we haven’t seen anything that will lead
us to believe that is taking place right now. And you have to realize that these new
marijuana laws are part of a much broader reform movement: Colorado has also been
revising its criminal justice laws. The first thing we did once Amendment 64 passed [in
Colorado] was to lower criminal penalties for those [between the ages of] 18 and 20
possessing marijuana. So we are already working on preempting any type of net-widening. What
impact will marijuana legalization have on the War on Drugs as a whole? David: Any changes in
the War on Drugs will require continued organizing and agitation, because history has
shown that one step forward has also resulted in two steps back [for] communities of color.
52
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Permutation do both
Extensions
(___)
(___) Permutation do both solves the net benefit – decriminalization is SO effective at
damaging the cartels that it eliminates any down falls to dismantling the war on drugs
Duke, Yale professor of Law, 2009 (Stephen – Professor of Law, Yale Law School, “Drugs: To
Legalize or Not”, 4/25, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124061360462654683)
Marijuana presents the strongest case for this approach. According to some estimates,
marijuana comprises about 70% of the illegal product distributed by the Mexican cartels.
Marijuana will grow anywhere. If the threat of criminal prosecution and forfeitures did not
deter American marijuana farmers, America's entire supply of that drug would be homegrown. If we taxed the marijuana agribusiness at rates similar to that for tobacco and alcohol, we
would raise about $10 billion in taxes per year and would save another $10 billion we now spend
on law enforcement and imprisoning marijuana users and distributors. Even with popular
support, legalizing and regulating the distribution of marijuana in the U.S. would be neither
easy nor quick. While imposing its prohibitionist will on the rest of the world for nearly a
century, the U.S. has created a network of treaties and international agreements requiring
drug prohibition. Those agreements would have to be revised. A sensible intermediate step
would be to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana and to exercise benign
neglect of American marijuana growers. Doing both would puncture the market for imports
from Mexico and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that fuels the internecine
warfare in Mexico.
53
War on Drugs Affirmative
Answers to Decriminalization
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: States Decrim Counterplan – Fed Key Extensions
(___)
(___) The federal government taking action is key – policing and imprisonment will still
continue
Lynch 12, Mona, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California,
Theoretical Criminology, “Theorizing the role of the ‘war on drugs’ in US punishment,” 16(2) 175–
199
The federal case thus represents the quintessential ‘war on drugs’. It has been exceptionally
punitive, meting out prison sentences in the overwhelming majority of drug cases, and it
has over-targeted minorities through its policies regarding crack cocaine, its definitions of
relevant sentencing factors under the Guidelines, and by over-selecting people of color for federal
prosecution. Yet, the federal system is unrepresentative of the more general US case in two
important regards: first, it deals with only a small percentage of known drug offenses.9 Second, the
federal drug offense caseloads are highly discretionary and represent, even more than
those in state and local courts, matters of prosecutorial policy decision making .
54