Drug Warriors Spend Money Training Cops to Be Able to Argue for the Drug War

Aaron Malin at the always
interesting Show-MeCannabis site has some more great
reporting on the feckless and pointless silliness of the police
task forces fighting our hopeless and insane war on drugs.

I
blogged last month on how Malin found them stonewalling him
over petty terminological issues when he tries to use a sunshine
law to get info on a drug “task force” that an official insists
doesn’t exist since its official name was “Metro
Multi-jurisdictional Undercover Drug Program.”

This new story by Malin is actually also from last month, but
just digested by me today, and at any rate represents a timeless
problem: government using
its own power to propagandize for itself.

As Malin reports:

According to the Clay County Drug Task Force, at a taxpayer
funded conference supposedly dedicated to law enforcement training,
Missouri’s narcotics officers were taught the latest
anti-legalization talking points. What’s more, they received
training credit hours (POST Certification) for their attendance at
the class — all to become well-versed in the latest drug war
propaganda. ….

Taxpayers should be troubled by the notion that their money,
allocated for the training of our law enforcement officers, is used
to fund political propaganda. Missourians should be troubled by the
notion that learning the latest anti-legalization talking points
counts as training hours for law enforcement. Cannabis policy
reform activists should be troubled by the fact that dismantling an
80-year-old marijuana-prohibition complex, already an uphill
battle, becomes even harder when we are forced to fund political
training for our opposition with tax dollars…

Malin, who does much of his reporting via rigorous public record
requests, informs us that “the Department of Public Safety
only began redacting the name of this conference from documents I
requested on task force grant funding after I began asking
specific questions about these conference expenditures.”