It takes a skeptical look at the new overdose/abuse figures the federal government is touting, and points out that the problems we’re seeing today with pill mills and strip-mall clinics are the result of overly protective drug control policies. And they’re the same sorts of policies opioid critics are now saying need to be expanded and strengthened in response to the latest panic.

On the other hand . . . according to the source in the story, if this had happened to your average resident of Tennessee, they at the very least would be subject to a criminal investigation.

But there was no investigation. Which is likely because this woman was—and still is—the director of the Tennessee state agency “whose mission is to eradicate marijuana.”

After they killed him, they then went after his grandmother.

After a police officer fatally shot an 18-year-old man in his Bronx apartment on Thursday, the man’s grandmother, a witness to the shooting, was taken into custody and held against her will for several hours, a friend of the family said on Saturday.

An officer confronted the man, Ramarley Graham, who was in the bathroom possibly trying to flush some marijuana down the toilet. A moment later, a shot rang out, killing the teenager.

While officers had trailed Mr. Graham to the apartment thinking he was armed, no gun was found, making the grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, a critical witness . . .

At this juncture little is known of precisely what Ms. Hartley saw and what of that she has told detectives.

But her treatment by the police in the hours after her grandson was killed could become a sticking point in an investigation that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said would be presented to a grand jury.

After Mr. Graham was killed, Ms. Hartley was taken to the 47th Precinct station house on Laconia Avenue and held for seven hours, according to Carlton Berkley, a friend of Ms. Hartley’s who said he had retired from the police force as a detective in the 30th Precinct in upper Manhattan. Mr. Berkley added that Ms. Hartley was forced to give a statement about what happened.

“She gave it against her will,” Mr. Berkley said. “She didn’t want to speak to the police.”

Mr. Berkley, speaking on Saturday outside the Graham family home on East 229th Street in Wakefield, said: “We’re going to fight that statement.”

But let’s not lose sight of what’s important, here. Thanks to the good work of these undercover narcotics cops, the pot Ramarley Graham allegedly flushed down the toilet just before he was killed is no longer on the streets of New York. No children will get high on that pot. And that’s really all that matters.

Apparently running with the notion that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go to abusers of drugs and alcohol, Rep. Dvorak’s amendment requires legislators to submit to drug tests and a random breathalyzer test. They would have to reimburse the legislative council for the costs of these tests. If the legislator refused or failed the test, he or she would be subject to discipline or an assessed penalty by his or her chamber.

And it passed! Here’s the punchline:

I’m hearing that, with this amendment, Rep. McMillin is no longer so enthusiastic about the bill and will not be moving it forward.

Well of course it won’t. If anything, there’s a much stronger argument for drug testing the people who write and vote on laws than there your average welfare recipient.

(Thanks to Zach Wendling for the tip.)

The problem is that they broke into the wrong house . . . Attorney Michael J. Balskus, pointed out.

“They put guns to their heads and threatened to kill them if they did not turn over marijuana,” Balskus said . . .

Judge Barbara Key cited . . the emotional trauma . . .caused [to] the occupants of the house . .

“These were innocent college students going about their business with guns held to their heads thinking they were going to die,” Hart said. “They will suffer the trauma all the rest of their lives.”

Click here to see how you did.

Perhaps we’ll soon learn that Matthew Stewart was a big-time drug dealer hell-bent on taking down a team of cops. We don’t know enough yet to say anything for certain. But from what we do know, it doesn’t appear that way. The guy had no prior criminal record. And the article below suggests that the authorities are already setting expectations for the possibility that Stewart was just a guy who grew for his own use.

Here’s a DEA flack defending the raid and pointing out the (very real, though not in the way he’d have you believe) dangers of pot smoking.

The head of Utah’s Drug Enforcement Administration spoke with FOX 13 about the recent Ogden shooting that left one officer dead and five other officers wounded. There has been evidence gathered that may point to the shooting suspect maintaining a marijuana grow operation.

DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Smith has been involved in the war on drugs all over the globe. He is quick to dismiss any arguments about legalizing drugs like marijuana, especially after fellow officers were shot and killed, presumably trying to take down a so-called indoor marijuana grow operation.

“They’re heroes, they’re protecting the public!” said Smith . . .

Army veteran Matthew David Stewart, 37, is the suspected triggerman. Police will not say exactly why the strike force raided his home, but Stewart’s father says his son has issues and may have been growing marijuana in his home to “self-medicate.”

Smith says that, even if Stewart had allegedly used marijuana to only self-medicate, that his drug use is not a “victimless crime.”

“It’s not a legalization issue, it’s not an immigration issue, it’s a public safety issue. If someone is willing to shoot it out with police, who is self-medicating on marijuana, what’s to say he’s not willing to walk out his house and start shooting his neighbors?” Smith says.

Jesus. How about the fact that he hadn’t harmed a soul until armed government agents broke down his door? Reading these articles is like slamming your head against the wall. People keep dying. And the drug warriors keep taking that as confirmation that they need to double down on the policies that are exactly why people keep dying.

You wonder if Smith’s even capable of comprehending the possibility that it’s the tactics that caused this tragedy, not pot’s sinister—and completely unsupported by any scientific research—effect of turning unassuming veterans into cold-blooded killers. That is, I wonder if people like Smith really believe their own bullshit?

Smith says the shooting case will be reviewed and he hopes lessons will be learned to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Oh, there are lessons. But they won’t be what Smith and other drug warriors take from this awfulness. Which is why you aren’t going to “prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.”

No. So long as we have people like Agent Smith in positions of power, the pile of bodies—both cop and citizen—will only get larger.

MORE: Stewart’s father is now speaking out. Here he criticizes the tactics used in the raid.

After four years in the military, Matthew returned to Ogden and got a job as a security officer for the IRS. But he began having problems with depression and anxiety. He didn’t want to use prescription drugs, his father said, and chose to self-medicate with marijuana that he grew.

He eventually left the IRS and got a warehouse job at Walmart, working graveyard shift. About two months ago, he broke up with his girlfriend.

“He was a good guy,” his father said. “He worked hard. He served his country. He tried to live his life his way. He didn’t think he was hurting anybody.”

The Stewarts say they know very little about the Wednesday shootout at their son’s Ogden residence at 3268 Jackson Ave.

“We’re devastated by this whole thing,” Michael Stewart said.

The Stewarts have not been allowed to see their son at an undisclosed hospital. And they don’t know what happened when the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force entered the house with a search warrant.

Michael Stewart said his son kept a handgun for protection. But he said that his son’s shotgun had been in his parents’ possession for years and he didn’t have any automatic weapons.

Michael and Sonja Stewart say they can’t understand why the strike force would execute a search warrant the way that it did, knocking down the door and rushing into the residence….

If Matthew Stewart was sleeping or listening to music in his back room, there is a good chance they would not have heard police announce their arrival.

“If they had done some research, why not arrest him at Walmart?” Michael Stewart said.

“I’m hoping the citizens of this state can look at what’s happened here and rethink the drug war,” he added. “Are we losing the drug war?”

VICTOR RAMOS GUZMAN and his brother-in-law noticed a Virginia state trooper pull up beside them as they traveled on Interstate 95 near Emporia, Va., in November. “A police car drove by in parallel, looked at our faces and on no more than that decided to stop us,” Mr. Guzman said in a sworn affidavit.

Virginia State Police say the men were speeding, driving 86 mph in a 70 mph zone and “following too closely.” But the trooper did not issue a ticket that morning despite the allegedly excessive speed nor did he charge the men with any civil or criminal violations. He did, however, seize $28,500 in cash.

In a statement, Virginia State Police say that the “male driver” gave the trooper consent to search the car, but the driver — the brother-in-law — does not speak English. The police also claim the men were acting suspiciously because both “disclaimed ownership of the money” and provided “inconsistent and contradictory statements” about the money.

Misunderstandings cannot be discounted; English is a second language for Mr. Guzman. But there is also a simple explanation: The money wasn’t theirs. Mr. Guzman, an El Salvador native and lawful Northern Virginia resident, says he was transporting money for the church in which he serves as secretary. He told the officer he and his brother-in-law were taking $24,000 of the church’s cash to Atlanta to meet with the owner of a parcel of land in El Salvador, where the church hoped to build. He said $4,000 in his possession was set aside to buy a trailer for church-owned land in North Carolina, and $500 was earmarked to cover the trip’s expenses. A lawyer for the church confirms Mr. Guzman’s account.

After calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the trooper ordered the men to drive to a nearby police station, where he seized the cash and gave them a receipt. The money is being held by an arm of the immigration service, which is determining whether it should be returned. Mr. Guzman and the church have asked that the matter be referred to a federal court.

Americans for Forfeiture Reform has more details:

Trooper Murphy checked their papers, legal status, rental information, et cetera. Having found no violations, the trooper also called the FBI and ICE. The FBI declined involvement. The officer confiscated the cash and issued a receipt for it.

Guzman and Sorto were told by Trooper Murphy that the seizure was being executed “on order of ICE” but that no ICE agents were available because they were in a meeting. Guzman asked that they contact the church to verify their account of the currency trooper Murphy declined to do so and, apparently, told them to shut up. They were also told that they would be contacted by ICE Norfolk.

Having not been contacted by ICE or the Virginia State Patrol, the church contacted attorney Claudia Flower on November 4th. Flower contacted the state police and ICE. ICE, at that point, declined involvement.  Later that day, Flower was able to talk to CL Murphy.

My first thought here was that the state trooper was trying to get the feds involved in order to take advantage of the “adoption” program. Under adoption, police agencies in states with strong forfeiture laws (that is, laws that protect property owners) can get around state law if they ask a federal police agency to join in the investigation. The federal agency then is technically the agency that seizes the funds, making the investigation subject to more lenient federal forfeiture laws than those of more restrictive state. The feds then give as much as 80 percent of the seized property back to the local police agency.

But it turns out that Virginia has pretty awful civil forfeiture laws—probably worse than federal law, which was improved in 2000. So I don’t know what Cl. Murphy was doing. Perhaps he knew he couldn’t pin anything on these two at the scene, so he would tie them up in an immigration nightmare. But have a look at the factors that Murphy says justify the seizure:

Flower inquired of the probable cause for the seizure and was told . . .

1) The members stated that the cash was not theirs but belonged to the church.

2) The church was located in Baltimore MD, while the address of the individuals was in Virginia.

3) Guzman and Sorto appeared confused.

4) Guzman and Sorto did not know where they were going.

On those factors alone, the state of Virginia can  apparently take your cash on suspicion of criminal activity. It’s then up to you to find an attorney who knows how to get it back. They didn’t even go through the charade of prodding a drug dog to alert.

And it gets worse.

[Fowler told Murphy] Guzman and Sorto were driving south bound towards Fayettville, and then to Atlanta, GA as they had told the officer. They knew where they were going and why.

Murphy then stated to Flower, ”People lie to me all the time why do I need to listen to you? The money was seized on behalf of ICE, J.T. Slayton of ICE Norfolk, maybe the chain of command does not know because he has not had time to file a report.”

Murphy then yelled at Flower and hung up.

So many questions. Why would a Virginia state trooper seize $28,000 on behalf of ICE when no ICE agents were ever called to the scene to investigate? Can ICE really just order a property seizure after a traffic stop over the phone, based on nothing more than a state troopers assertion of the four factors above? Does ICE regularly interact with state police agencies in this way?

According to the Post, the “money is being held by an arm of the immigration service, which is determining whether it should be returned.” Think about that for a moment. The government pulled these guys over for driving 12 mph over the speed limit, took $28,000 in cash from them because they appeared confused and lived in a different (bordering) state than their church, and has now held that money for two months while it investigates whether the money was linked to a criminal enterprise (or, if you’re cynical, looks for a way to link it to a criminal enterprise)—and whether or not it will do Guzman, Sorto, and their church the favor of returning it.

As the Post points out, many immigrants don’t carry credit cards or checkbooks. These two were fortunate enough to have been hooked up with some excellent attorneys, who are handling the case pro bono. You wonder how many aren’t, and how many have had cash seized in small enough amounts that the cost of hiring an attorney to win it back wouldn’t be worth the effort.

The glib sloganeering about how they apply violence is bad enough. But note that they chose the word use, instead of sell or deal.

Thanks to Eapen Thampy for the tip.