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1. Canada’s Civil Forfeiture Act of 2006 costs man his house
2. Missouri’s only technical college institutes mandatory drug testing of all students
3. 15 youths in Singapore facing caning, possible 20 years, for less than 30g of marijuana
4. Colorado DUID investigatory panel shows evidence that 5ng/ml per se DUID standards are not reliable indicators of impairment

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Another Stasher C.C. from Lowndes County emailed Georgia Rep. Tommy Benton to protest his stance that marijuana users should be tortured by the brutal act of caning, as is the standard in Singapore.

GA Rep. Benton: "I am opposed to the legalization of marijuana. I think we should go to caning for people caught using and maybe execute dealers."

Before we get to Rep. Benton’s response (sadly, this one is not a Hall & Oates cover), I’d like to explain a bit what “caning” is, courtesy of research by Georgia NORML’s David Clark and the website of World Corporal Punishment (placed below the “Read more” link in case you’re sensitive to pictures and descriptions of brutality).  This isn’t some schoolhouse rap on the knuckles from the teacher; this is a form of torture.

Rep. Benton's proposed punishment for marijuana users

(World Corporal Punishment) The Singapore Prisons Regulations require that caning be inflicted on the buttocks (Regulation 132(2)).

In practice the prisoner is required to strip completely naked for the administration of the punishment.

Once he has removed his clothes, the inmate is made to stand facing the trestle so that he can be tied to it.

Rep. Benton doesn't think this is "cruel and unusual punishment"

In Singapore, he is made to bend over a pad between the front legs. His feet are secured to the front base with his hands secured to the back legs, so that he is bent over at about right angles at the hip.

Once the prisoner is secured, the caning officer will take up position, standing about five feet away, and adjusting his position with the aid of the cane.  Correct positioning is critical. If he is too near the prisoner, the tip of the cane will fall beyond the buttocks and thus reduce the effect of the stroke. If he is too far, the stroke will only cover part of the buttocks.

Rep. Benton doesn't think people who oppose caning hold true "conservative values".

A senior officer stands by, with the doctor.

The cane is soaked overnight in water, so it is supple. The Prisons Department says this is to prevent it from splitting and shearing the skin. They denied earlier claims that the cane is soaked in brine. However, it is treated with antiseptic before use.

TO ADMINISTER A CRIMINAL WHIPPING, the officer first twists his body to the left. The aim is to get as much force as possible behind the stroke. The offender is whipped on the buttocks. After each stroke, the rotan is immediately pulled back.

Irrespective of the age of the offender or the type of crime committed, every stroke is inflicted with the full strength of the warder: “Canings are administered with maximum force” (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 2 April 1994).

Twelve months after caning, the scars are still visible.

“… when caning, the warder uses the whole of his body weight, and not just the strength of his arms, to strike. He holds the cane rigidly at arm’s length and pivots on his feet to deliver the stroke”. (Singapore Director of Prisons, September 1974)

A 25-year-old caning officer in Malaysian prisons, Iskandar Radz, said that he underwent a two-week training course during which he was taught how to swing the 1.09-metre cane at a minimum speed of 160kph and produce a force upon impact of at least 90kg.

Which brings us to Rep. Tommy Benton’s latest response to one of our sincere and polite emails asking him to reconsider recanting his unconstitutional and inhumane statement “I am opposed to the legalization of marijuana. I think we should go to caning for people caught using and maybe execute dealers. That would solve the problem as well. That is what they do in Singapore and they don’t have a drug problem, but then they have less liberty than we do here.”

You don’t want to legalize weed because of your conservative values. Pardon my French but that is a big old pile of bull crap. You and your cronies want it legalized so you can get a hit anytime without having to worry about getting arrested. I have forwarded your email to the Lowndes County sheriffs office so that they can be on the lookout for you. Consider this my last correspondence on the the subject to you or anyone else who shares your similar “conservative views’.
Tommy Benton
HD31

So now Rep. Benton has taken another unconstitutional step of threatening his constituency with harassment by law enforcement for politely and reasonably petitioning their government for a redress of grievances. It’s no surprise that someone who doesn’t understand the Eighth Amendment would have trouble understanding the First.

This just in from a Georgia Stasher as part of our ongoing series called Politicians on Pot, where listeners send in replies from their elected officials regarding marijuana law reform.

Thanks for the email. We will have to agree to disagree on this and whether or not money is wasted. I am opposed to the legalization of marijuana. I think we should go to caning for people caught using and maybe execute dealers. That would solve the problem as well. That is what they do in Singapore and they don’t have a drug problem, but then they have less liberty than we do here.

Rep. Tommy Benton
tommy.benton@house.ga.gov

Isn’t it amazing how much of the Constitution an elected official is willing to throw away for the Drug War Exception?  Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Singapore’s drug laws:

The law creates a presumption of trafficking for certain threshold amounts, e.g. 30 grams of cannabis. It also creates a presumption that a person possesses drugs if he possesses the keys to a premises containing the drugs, and that “Any person found in or escaping from any place or premises which is proved or presumed to be used for the purpose of smoking or administering a controlled drug shall, until the contrary is proved, be presumed to have been smoking or administering a controlled drug in that place or premises.” Thus, one runs the risk of arrest for drug use by simply being in the company of drug users. The law also allows officers to search premises and individuals, without a search warrant, if he “reasonably suspects that there is to be found a controlled drug or article liable to seizure”.

So if you don’t mind sacrificing essential liberty, if you’re cool with cops searching you and your property on mere suspicion or being considered guilty because you happened to be in a night club where someone unknown to you got caught sniffing coke in the restroom, or if you think it’s reasonable to execute someone for possessing 1.06 ounces of pot, you can have a relatively drug-free society.

The United States per-capita rate of drug crimes is 41st out of 60 countries surveyed by NationMaster.com at 560.1 per 100,000.  Singapore ranks near the bottom at #53 with a rate almost 1/12th that of America, or 46.8 per 100,000.  Yet Spain, with its fairly liberal drug laws, ranks #56 in the survey with only 27.9 drug offenses per 100,000.  That 30 grams of cannabis that gets you the hangman’s noose in Singapore isn’t even a crime in Spain and neither is buying and selling of seeds and cultivating up to five plants.

Now, certainly you’re going to have a lower rate when many of the “crimes” aren’t being counted (Spain has similar personal possession decriminalization for other drugs as well), but does anyone think Spain has descended into chaos?  By all accounts it seems to be at least as nice a place as Singapore, even though they lock up in prisons 2.6 times fewer citizens for all crimes (per capita prisoners: Spain 146/100k (#61); Singapore 388/100k (#12)).  It is tough to compare, as Singapore is a city-state on an island and Spain and America are larger continental countries with both urban and rural areas.  However, regardless of crime rate, it is simply un-American to suggest that we should be whipping people to punish them for smoking a joint.

Download link: NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2009-04-02

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Gingrich: We should have Singapore-style drug tests for Americans

Want a clear sign that we are winning the war on drugs? When the prohibitionists have to offer a radical and extreme solution to drug use, you know you’re on the right track. Bill O’Reilly took a trip to Singapore and so in five days, he figures out the “remedy” to drugs.

Bill O’Reilly: Now, they have no drug problem in Singapore at all, number one, because they hang drug dealers — they execute them. And number two, the market is very thin, because when they catch you using, you go away with a mandatory rehab. You go to some rehab center, which they have, which the government has built. The United States does not have the stomach for that. We don’t have the stomach for that, Mr. Speaker.

Yep, that’s right mandatory random drug testing for EVERY CITIZEN. Execute citizens that have more drugs on them than you want (any amount will do). This isn’t just big government, it’s totalitarian government. It a government that give you the freedom to do what you should, as dictated by the elite ruling class. Your life is no longer yours, your life belongs to the state from beginning to end.

Surely the head of the “small government, get government out of our lives” party would strenuously disagree with this most fascist policy? Not on YOUR life..

Gingrich: Well, I think it’s time we get the stomach for that, Bill. And I think we need a program — I would dramatically expand testing. I think we have — and I agree with you. I would try to use rehabilitation, I’d make it mandatory. And I think we have every right as a country to demand of our citizens that they quit doing illegal things which are funding, both in Afghanistan and in Mexico and in Colombia, people who are destroying civilization.

That’s right, the country has every right to demand from you to stop doing things that the government determines illegal. You have no rights, the government has total and absolute rule in Newt Gingrich’s America. Newt in a single sentence sells out every philosophy he has ever expressed a belief in to “win” the war on Americans using marijuana. It takes a lot of desperation and futility to bring a mind like Newt to this point, and the drug war’s twisted logic is twisting Newt into a pretzel. The moralists in this country have tried everything in their power including shredding the Constitution and still it’s not enough.

Our time has come.