Drug WarRant

This fairly bizarre bit of propaganda has been unveiled in New Zealand: Drugged drivers next on safety hit list

In the war against drugged drivers an advertising campaign reveals the reactions of secretly filmed New Zealanders when they are told the driver of the car they are in is high on drugs.

The new road safety campaign hits television screens this weekend with the unscripted responses of people who thought they were being driven to a costume fitting for a commercial.

Instead they were being covertly filmed by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and their drivers were actors pretending to be under the influence of drugs.

I know actors who could scare the crap out of passengers by pretending to be Justin Bieber or an armadillo while driving. What does that mean?

It sounds like a good Candid Camera bit, but what does it really have to do with safety on the highways?

But I’m sure that, obviously with this big effort, New Zealand at least has strong scientific data showing that drugged driving is a serious problem. Right?

Right?

NZTA chief executive Geoff Dangerfield said less was known about the extent of drugged driving in New Zealand compared with research on drink-driving, but evidence suggested drugs could be a bigger factor in crashes than officially reported.

“We know that driving under the influence of drugs is common and widespread, yet our research shows that only one in 10 New Zealanders see it as a problem,” he said.

So they really don’t have much evidence, but they’re sure it must be true, and apparently somehow the fact that New Zealanders don’t see it as a problem means that it’s a problem. There’s logic and science for you.

Not that the U.S. has been any better.

Our National Drug Control Strategy includes these goals (in order)

• Encouraging states to adopt Per Se drug impairment laws
• Collecting further data on drugged driving

Yep. Pass the laws and then look for proof of the problem.

Sabet and Kerlikowse had absolutely no interest in science when they perverted NHTSA data to imply something it didn’t.

Now it’s possible that there may be some real science in the future to determine an actual level of THC that results in actual impairment. The best study I know of in that area is being conducted by Dr. Jeff Brubacher with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He describes it thusly:

…we analyze police reports to determine who should have been able to avoid the crash (culpable) and who had no chance of avoiding the crash (non-culpable). This is done using strict guidelines and without knowing the driver’s toxicology results. We then compare THC positive rates between culpable and non-culpable drivers. If the culpable drivers are more likely to be THC positive, then there is an association between THC and crash causation.

We are also looking at how the culpability rate varies with THC level. Heavy cannabis users have trivially elevated blood THC levels (< 2 ng/mL) for a week or more after last use. There isn’t any evidence that these low levels contribute to crashes. We will also be measuring THC metabolites (COOH-THC) – combined with THC. This can be used to roughly estimate the time from last use till time of crash.

Now that, to me, sounds like real science in determining if, and to what degree, cannabis impairment can be directly connected to safety.

Why isn’t the United States doing that instead of just measuring what’s in the blood of random drivers? Because they aren’t really interested in science or learning the truth. They just want ammunition.

On Tuesday, we reported on the large study that proved that marijuana use did not impair lung function. Ed Dunkle in comments said “I wonder how Kevin Sabet is going to spin this.”

Well, it didn’t take long.

Is Marijuana Good For You? by Kevin Sabet in The Fix.

He was clearly not happy, but basically, his response appears to be something along the lines of ‘Oh yeah? Well, it’s still probably not as good for you as breathing clean air.’ He even tried to double down on the tired old lung cancer bit:

(In case you’re wondering, the evidence linking marijuana and lung cancer are mixed, with a recent study stating that “cannabis smoking increases the risk of developing a lung cancer independently of an eventual associated tobacco exposure.” Other studies have failed to find such a link.)

The study Kevin refers to is neither recent nor much of a study. Dr. Donald Tashkin, clearly one of the leading scientists in this field (if not the top) dismissed it out of hand:
He notes that a much smaller, recent study from New Zealand did claim to find a link, but only in very heavy users. He says, “The authors’ interpretation of their data can be faulted because of the small numbers of their subjects exhibiting such heavy use, which rendered their estimates of risk imprecise.”

Such scientific impreciseness doesn’t seem to bother Kevin Sabet, who promotes the extremely flawed small lung cancer study from New Zealand, while merely mentioning that “other studies failed to find such a link” instead of admitting that the largest study in the world, conducted in the U.S. and funded by NIDA conclusively found no cancer link and a slight inverse link.

Kevin Sabet is clearly no friend to science or medicine.

However, he found his own expert:

Mark Gold, perhaps the most distinguished professor in the country on drugs and the brain and body, told me, “It is possible, but not proven, that cannabis smoke may be less toxic than cigarette smoke, but it is not better than clean air.

Ah, he got a distinguished professor to agree that clean air is good. Congratulations. And who is this Mark Gold, anyway? Where did Kevin find this expert?

Well, it turns out that Kevin has just gotten a job at University of Florida, and he tweets: “…Just appointed as Assistant Professor at their College of Medicine under the great Mark Gold. Staying in Cambridge, MA though.”

Ah.

Bonus: Check out the nonsense from Bob DuPont in Sabet’s article.

Update:

I tweeted:

@KevinSabet Why do you continue to promote the discredited NZ study on lung cancer and downplay the comprehensive U.S. study funded by NIDA?

Sabet tweets back:

@DrugWarRant I’m not promoting, I listed both sides and I’m sticking to the science. The jury is still out on it.

Really?

Let’s look at what he said again:

In case you’re wondering, the evidence linking marijuana and lung cancer are mixed, with a recent study stating that “cannabis smoking increases the risk of developing a lung cancer independently of an eventual associated tobacco exposure.” Other studies have failed to find such a link.

He includes a quote from the discredited New Zealand study, but lumps the Tashkin/NIDA study in “other studies have failed to find such a link.”

How is the jury still out? What jury? Kevin’s jury? Comparing those two disparate studies as if they were merely “both sides” isn’t science.

Update 2: As Howard says, remember that these arguments have no impact on legalization. Legalization arguments are about the damage of prohibition.

As I noted in the original post about the lung study, even if marijuana was extremely damaging to the lungs, that wouldn’t justify prohibition.

Have fun with this one from the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre

In a world-first, researchers from the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC), based at the University of New South Wales, are leading a study to determine whether the pharmaceutical drug Sativex can help people better manage cannabis withdrawal symptoms as a platform for ongoing abstinence. […]

“There is currently no targeted drug available to assist with cannabis withdrawal.” [said NCPIC director Professor Jan Copeland.]

An excellent position by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice

DOJ urges judge to side with plaintiff in Baltimore police taping case

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has urged a federal court to side with a Howard County man in a lawsuit over his cellphone being seized by Baltimore police at the Preakness Stakes after he filmed officers making an arrest.

The federal attorneys say the lawsuit “presents constitutional questions of great moment in this digital age.” They asked U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg to rule that citizens have a right to record police officers and that officers who seize and destroy recordings without a warrant or due process are violating the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which is representing the plaintiff, Christopher Sharp, said it believes this is the first time the Department of Justice has weighed in on the topic of recording police.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy has been doing a great job getting out to the candidate events in New Hampshire and trying to force the GOP candidates to say something about drug policy (with sometimes bizarre results). This was clearly their easiest one.

Progress?

1. Police advisor says we need to reconsider use of forced entry warrants.

In light of police deaths, training is scrutinized

“It’s time to change our thinking,” says Pat McCarthy, who advises police agencies across the country. “Cops are exposing themselves to increasing danger many times over, and it’s just not necessary.” […]

McCarthy said the deadly confrontation underscores a need for police to rethink their tactics.

“The days of knocking down doors in drug cases should be over. Given what’s going on now, you have to consider other options,” McCarthy said.
He said law enforcement officials should focus more on attempting to lure suspects out into the open or simply “wait them out.”

2. An intelligent piece in the Daily Mail opposing sniffer dogs and random tests in the classroom.

Sniffer dogs and random tests in the classrooms are NOT the way to protect schoolchildren from drugs by Damon Barrett

Not only do these invasive and enforcement-led measures not work, they are counterproductive. Labelling those tested as ‘drug users’ is likely to reduce their confidence, happiness and self-esteem at school. Drug testing cannot distinguish between occasional, recreational drug use and more problematic patterns of use.

So youngsters at very little risk of harm will be ‘labelled’ and drawn into the net of counselling services, ‘treatment’ centres and the criminal justice system. The consequence of a positive test result can also involve suspension or school exclusion. Ask any parent if they want this for their child.

Drug testing also runs the risk of diverting some young people to substances which are likely to be more harmful but less easily identifiable than cannabis, such as alcohol, amphetamines or volatile substances. Some may also play truant to avoid the possibility of being tested. Gyngell herself is concerned about absence from school and it is a key risk factor in initiation into drug use and developing more risky behaviours. Why make matters worse?

Drug testing and running sniffer dogs through schools is at best an expensive waste of time and at worst money spent on harming our own children.

Study: Smoking Marijuana Not Linked with Lung Damage by Maia Szalavitz in TIME.

Marijuana does not impair lung function—at least not in the doses inhaled by the majority of users, according to the largest and longest study ever to consider the issue, which was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers working on a long-term study of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults or CARDIA study) tested the lung function of 5115 young adults over the course of 20 years, starting in 1985 when they were aged 18 to 30. […]

While tobacco smokers showed the expected drop in lung function over time, the new research found that marijuana smoke had unexpected and apparently positive effects. Low to moderate users actually showed increased lung capacity compared to nonsmokers on two tests, known as FEV1 and FVC. FEV1 is the amount of air someone breathes out in the first second after taking the deepest possible breath; FVC is the total volume of air exhaled after the deepest inhalation.

“FEV1 and FVC both actually increased with moderate and occasional use of marijuana,” says Dr. Mark Pletcher, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco and the lead author of the study.

Not that it really matters from a legalization point of view. Even if marijuana was damaging to lungs, that wouldn’t in any way justify prohibition. But this study makes prohibition “arguments” look even more pathetic.

There are all kinds of anti-drug governmental programs around the world and the UK has its own propaganda mascot called Frank.

Frank is there to help you, and has even opened his head to help you play Spliff Pinball.

Spliff Pinball shows how when you smoke cannabis it releases (space bar) a little ball of weed that bounces around in your head, and if you toke at the wrong time (right/left arrows) it will launch that ball back into your brain and cause brain damage.

Of course, the way the game is constructed (with all hits being negative points), the object of the game can only be “who can damage the brain the most,” which is apparently the challenge Frank wants to give to teens.

A new gallup poll shows 31% of the public identifies themselves as Democrats and 27% as Republicans.

If, when you take a quick look at those numbers, it seems that a whole lot of people aren’t included, your math skills are just fine.

In fact, it’s a record number of self-identified Independents.

Not sure what this means for drug policy, but since both of the major political parties have been willing enablers in all the death and destruction of prohibition, I’m not shedding any tears for their discomfort.

There are still pockets of reefer madness that pop up every now and then. This one from Dr. Ruairi Henley writing in the Irish Times is particularly amusing:

I was aware during my college years of the existence of a few long-term cannabis users. I freely admit I regarded these people as a bunch of brain-dead, attention-seeking idiots suffering from a chronic aversion to personal hygiene.

Unfortunately, these clowns usually attracted a cult following of guitar-strumming, arty types whose idea of a fun weekend was to stand outside Brown Thomas screaming abuse at customers intending to buy fur coats.

Another interesting feature of the male section of this half-witted species was their apparent inability to use a razor on a regular basis.

In fact, I cannot recall ever meeting a clean-shaven pothead. This is an approach to grooming they appear to share with trade union officials and borderline communist politicians.