Drug WarRant

A lot of people have been talking about the new Pew Research Poll showing that a majority now supports legalizing marijuana (for the first time in this major poll).

I’m not at all surprised, and, to some extent, I was even more interested by some of the other questions in the survey.

As support for marijuana legalization has grown, there has been a decline in the percentage viewing it as a “gateway drug.” Currently, just 38% agree that “for most people the use of marijuana leads to the use of hard drugs.” In 1977, 60% said its use led to the use of hard drugs.

This has been one of the major arguments used (misused) by prohibitionists for decades. They used a vague definition of “gateway,” consistently conflated correlation with causation, and just plain lied. We knew, of course, but we had an uphill battle getting that understanding to the people. It seems that we’ve made real progress.

Also

More recently, there has been a major shift in attitudes on whether it is immoral to smoke marijuana. Currently, 32% say that smoking marijuana is morally wrong, an 18-point decline since 2006 (50%). Over this period, the percentage saying that smoking marijuana is not a moral issue has risen 15 points (from 35% then to 50% today).

This was a major issue keeping small-government social conservatives supporting criminalization. Take away the moral opposition, and conservatives have very little reason not to support legalization.

I was thinking about how the general public no longer blindly supports the tired old false arguments when I read the Drug Czar’s latest blog post: Director Kerlikowske Joins Secretary Napolitano on Southwest Border

As part of the visit, Director Kerlikowske released a progress update on Administration efforts to strengthen border security. Some of the highlights include:

Increased weapons and drugs seizures. During 2009-2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized 39 percent more drugs, 71 percent more currency, and 189 percent more weapons along the Southwest border as compared to fiscal years (FY) 2005-2008.

And I was struck at just how… old that kind of argument feels today. So I tweeted to the Czar:

.@ONDCP @RafaelONDCP After decades of bragging on increased seizures, does anyone still buy that as “progress”? http://t.co/ZBV51fmMRN

and

.@ONDCP @RafaelONDCP If you trapped 10 mice in your home last year and 50 this year, would you call that progress? Increase in seizures?

I think the public is quite ready to be receptive to realizing just how stupid the argument is that increased seizures are a measure of drug war success, when they are in fact, the reverse.

It takes a lot of work to undo decades of propaganda, particularly among the public who aren’t at all focused on drug policy, but we’re making real progress.

A very good article by Isabel Macdonald in The Nation: The GOP’s Drug-Testing Dragnet.

The article goes into depth how drug testing industry came about in part as a back-door method to go after marijuana users…

But the Reagan administration saw drug tests as essential for cracking down on a population largely outside the reach of law enforcement: people smoking pot in the privacy of their own homes. “Because anyone using drugs stands a very good chance of being discovered, with disqualification from employment as a possible consequence, many will decide that the price of using drugs is just too high,” read a 1989 White House report.

And, once created, the industry developed a life of its own, spending lots of money to buy votes to keep drug testing profits flourishing.

In the meantime, several Republican lawmakers in Congress have pushed hard for the mandatory drug testing of anyone, anywhere, applying for welfare. Leading the charge in the Senate is Orrin Hatch, longtime conservative stalwart from Utah, who received a $8,000 campaign contribution in 2012 from the political action committee of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp), a behemoth in the drug-testing industry and a Hoffmann-La Roche spinoff. Hatch has also received $3,000 from another political action committee to which LabCorp contributes—the American Clinical Laboratory Association PAC—as well as $4,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC of another company with major interests in drug testing, Abbott Laboratories. GOP Congressman Charles Boustany is among those pushing welfare drug testing in the House. In the 2012 campaign cycle, he received $15,000 from Abbott Laboratories’ PAC.

So many war profiteers. One of the big challenges we face in reform is taking on those who profit from the destruction of the drug war.

Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic: A Heartbreaking Drug Sentence of Staggering Idiocy

John Horner, a 46-year-old fast-food restaurant worker, lost his eye in a 2000 accident and was prescribed painkillers. Years later, he met and befriended a guy who seemed to be in pain himself. His new friend asked if he could buy some of Horner’s pain pills. Naturally, the friend was a police informant.

Yep. You know what happens next.

25 years.

…

Conor follows that article up the next day with this one: The War on Drugs Is Far More Immoral Than Most Drug Use — in which he counters Peter Wehner’s hypocritical OpEd in the Washington Post.

What he doesn’t seem to understand is that many advocates of individual liberty, myself included, regard liberty itself as a moral imperative. I don’t want to ridicule the “language of morality.” I want to state, as forcefully as possible, that the War on Drugs is deeply, irredeemably immoral; that it corrodes the minds and souls of those who prosecute it, and creates incentives for bad behavior that those living under its contours have always and will always find too powerful to resist. Drug warriors may disagree, but they should not pretend that they are the only ones making moral claims, and that their opponents are indifferent to morality. Reformers are often morally outraged by prohibitionist policies and worry that nannying degrades the character of citizens. […]

See the man in the photo at the top of this article? It isn’t immoral for him to light a plant on fire, inhale the smoke, and enjoy a mild high for a short time, presuming he doesn’t drive while high. But it would be immoral to react to his plant-smoking by sending men with guns to forcibly arrest him, convict him in a court, and lock him up for months or even years for a victimless crime. That’s the choice, dear reader. So take a look at the guy in the photo and make your choice: Is it more moral to let him smoke, or to forcibly cage him with thieves, rapists, and murderers?

In the previous post, I asked the commenters to discuss Mark Kleiman’s statement:

Just 20 percent of users consume 80 percent of all the weed in the U.S., Kleiman said. (Forty-six percent of all alcohol consumed in the U.S. is part of drinking binges, he added).

“The only way to get a lot of revenue is to sell a lot of marijuana,” he said. “The only way to sell a lot or marijuana is to sell to people who smoke a lot of marijuana. And that’s not a good thing.” Policymakers may not want the state “fostering disease,” he said.

You all did a great job. I just wanted to add my two cents in here (some of which has already been mentioned in comments).

First, let’s define binge drinking:

Binge drinking is defined as episodic excessive drinking.[7] There is currently no world wide consensus on how many drinks constitute a “binge”, but in the US, the term is often taken to mean consuming five or more standard drinks (male), or four or more drinks (female), on one occasion. [wikipedia]

Now, lets’ assume that the two numbers given are correct (45% of alcohol consumed in binge drinking, and 80% of marijuana consumed by 20% of users).

That certainly does not mean that everyone who is has had 5/4 drinks in one occasion is diseased, nor does it mean that 20% of all marijuana users are diseased. It simply points out some distribution-of-use facts as conditions currently exist for those two products.

We know that less than 10% of marijuana users have any dependency, so it’s hardly likely that 20% are problem users. Ironically, it’s likely that almost every single person who uses marijuana for medical purposes (ie, to combat disease) would fall in that 20% of users.

And, of course, these numbers have other limitations. With the alcohol figures, you’d probably have a whole different set of numbers if you break down beer versus wine versus hard alcohol, etc. And, with marijuana, you’ll have a completely different mix of users with legalization.

Mark Kleiman likes to believe that the percentage of users of a drug that are problem users is an absolute fixed percentage (i.e., if 10% are problem users and then you legalize, 10% of all new users will be problem users as well). Of course, that doesn’t fit either reality or logic. There is absolutely no data to support such a viewpoint, and the truth is, with marijuana being readily available, criminalization has vastly more of a deterrence factor on casual users than problematic users; hence legalization mostly results in an increase in casual non-problematic use.

So, can you make money on marijuana as a state without fostering disease? Of course. First of all, you cam make money on marijuana even if there is no increase in use at all. And then, yes, it is quite possible to increase sales dramatically without increasing abuse. (Kleiman’s price point isn’t the only tool available, and it’s a pretty poor one, as it leads to substitution, which we don’t want, and also has more of a deterrent on the casual user than the problematic user within any equivalent economic class.)

I think it’s fine for Mark Kleiman to tell the state that the tax revenue numbers that they were expecting are unrealistic. He has said numerous times that his role is simply to advise them on implementation; the voters have already decided on legalization. However, when he makes wild, unsupported statements like this, it sure does seem like he’s still interested in subverting the will of the voters.

I’ve got some things to discuss, but some big deadlines at work are keeping me busy.

Here’s one of the things I wanted to talk about, so why don’t you take a stab at it? Are the economics sound? Are there fallacies here?

Just 20 percent of users consume 80 percent of all the weed in the U.S., Kleiman said. (Forty-six percent of all alcohol consumed in the U.S. is part of drinking binges, he added).

“The only way to get a lot of revenue is to sell a lot of marijuana,” he said. “The only way to sell a lot or marijuana is to sell to people who smoke a lot of marijuana. And that’s not a good thing.” Policymakers may not want the state “fostering disease,” he said.

Link

Some universities focus on liberal arts, others on research; based on their Dean of Students, apparently the University of Maine focuses on hypocrisy.

University of Maine Dean of Students Robert Q. Dana has an OpEd in the Bangor Daily News: Marijuana legalization: An easy way out

We need to honestly acknowledge that for every person dangerously involved with drugs, that abuse always began by experimenting with a substance thought to be less risky. It is often the case that marijuana is the gateway drug, and confronting the fact that we have a drug problem and we need to do something immediately — beyond the simple reflex of “legalizing” — is necessary if our sons and daughters are to be effectively protected.

There’s a lot of other prohibition messages, with no real facts, but a lot of telling people what we should do about cracking down harder on things like marijuana.

But the interesting thing is if you go back a little earlier in this school year, when the University of Maine decided to sell beer at home football games.

Did Dean of Students Robert Q. Dana get upset and protest the decision to make that “substance thought to be less risky” more available on a student campus? Um, no.

“We heard from any number of fans who wanted to have access to adult beverages,” said Dr. Robert Dana, UMaine’s Vice President for Student Affairs. “Used appropriately, in a reasonable environment, that’s exactly what we intend to offer.” […]

“We’re very good at managing these things and it’ll be fun, but not problematic. I’m 100 percent sure of that,” Dana said.

So, if properly managed and used appropriately in a reasonable environment, it’s fine, but only if it’s a product mentioned in the university’s fight song (which begins “Fill the steins to dear old Maine”).

Also note that if you go to the University of Maine, you can take Brewing with Food Science class, where you learn to brew beer, plus… “Other topics will include the history of beer (from world and U.S. perspectives), styles of beer and a beer judge’s perspective of beer.”

… found on Facebook.

It was refreshing earlier this week to see a few of the Justices crack open their dusty Constitutions and discover some text sitting there between the 3rd and 5th Amendments. Almost surprising, unfortunately.

Jacob Sullum talks about one of the other huge 4th Amendment issues currently making its way into the courts: When Proactive Policing Becomes Harrassment

The Terry Supreme Court Decision that is the current law regarding encounters on the street allows stop and frisk if officers believed that a crime was about to take place and that the suspect was armed.

As the number of stop-and-frisk encounters initiated by the NYPD grew from about 100,000 in Michael Bloomberg’s first year as mayor to almost 700,000 in 2011, the share of stops yielding guns fell from 0.38 percent to 0.033 percent.

Pretty thin.

‘This Is Working’: Portugal, 12 Years after Decriminalizing Drugs in Speigel Online.

Another evaluation of the Portugal experiment in drug policy, now after 12 years, continues to show that it’s much better policy than the lock-them-up approach to drug policy that we have here.

Kevin S. won’t like this article – he’s always going on about how the Portugal experience is “overstated,” which is odd since the supposed goal of SAM (less incarceration more treatment) is exactly what’s going on in Portugal.

Where I agree with Kevin is that Portugal is not legalization. It is decriminalization.

Portugal is a good step, an important lesson, and a demonstration that the sky doesn’t fall when you remove criminal penalties, providing material support for the right move: regulated legalization.

Glenn Greenwald gets it right again: The gay marriage snowball and political change

It really is a bit shocking how quickly gay marriage transformed from being a fringe, politically toxic position just a few years ago to a virtual piety that must be affirmed in decent company. Whenever I write or speak about any of the issues on which I focus, I always emphasize that a posture of defeatism – which is a form of learned impotence: a belief that meaningful change is impossible – is misguided. This demonstrates why that is true: even the most ossified biases and entrenched institutional injustices can be subverted – if the necessary passion and will are summoned and the right strategies found. […]

That same type of rapid and previously unthinkable change is visible with other unjust laws: oppressive drug prohibition being the leading example. But one can easily find all sorts of examples from American history and the recent history of other countries which reflect the same truth: radical, positive, and relatively fast political change is always possible, no matter how formidable the obstacles seem.

Defeatism is more often than not a psychological instrument designed to relieve one of the responsibility to act (if change is impossible, then I have no reason and no obligation to work or take risks for it). That is bolstered by the effort of all ruling interests to instill a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness in those they suppress; systemic power abuses are, above all else, designed to persuade people of the futility of opposition, to adopt a defeatist mindset. But it is a mindset that finds little to no support in political history. The rapid and relentless dismantling of the anti-gay legal and societal framework in the US is yet more proof for that proposition.