Drug WarRant

A Ron Allen train wreck.

Bishop Ron Allen: “It’s a deadly and dangerous mantra that marijuana is safer than alcohol. I’ll offer you, sir, a cobra or a rattlesnake. Which one would you say is safer? Neither one.”

What I’m thinking: “Get your snakes away from me, crazy man. I’ll take a drink and a joint, and be safer than hanging out with you.”

Bishop Ron Allen: “We as a society are trying to say that ‘Hey, look. Let’s smoke marijuana and let’s not drive drunk..’ Look, they just had a bad accident in Italy. Come on and let’s look at that…” [was mercifully cut off] […]

“But now, we have a very serious problem on our hands. We have drug dealers and drug pushers such as the Drug Policy Alliance…”

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

— John F. Kennedy

How pathetic is that? Policies based on no facts, no reality, and ultimately the only active thing they’ve got to promote is advocating for the lack of a message.

After former defence secretary Bob Ainsworth called for legalizing drugs, what did the Labour leader have to say? Did he have a critique of the facts? Another proposal? No.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said today that the legalisation of drugs would send out “the wrong message” to young people as he distanced himself from a Labour backbencher’s calls for a “grown-up debate” on the issue.

He’s not interested in facts. He’s not interested in what impact policy would actually have on young people. He just wants… the absence of a message.

How about our drug czar?

“We have been telling young people, particularly for the past couple years, that marijuana is medicine,” the former Seattle police chief argued. “So it shouldn’t be a great surprise to us that young people are now misperceiving the dangers or the risks around marijuana.”

Not interested in facts, or in explaining to young people the difference between medical and recreational use, or regulating use, or anything else, except that he just wants… the absence of a message.

“Legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine,” he said.

That’s right — no coherent argument against legalization, except that he just wants… the absence of a message.

They’re completely out-gunned when it comes to the facts and they have nothing to show for all their years of prohibition. They’re bankrupt and can’t even generate a message. All they have left is to try to shut us up.

They’ve progressed from pushing “Just Say No” to pushing “Just Say Nothing.”

Pathetic.

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And it won’t work.

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Check out the one-man tutorial on drug policy given by our Malcolm Kyle in comments over at the Telegraph. It is phenomenal, and a fine example of taking excellent advantage of an opportunity, and using all the information gained from the hours we spend reading about drug policy.

Breaking right now at Transform Drug Policy Foundation Blog:

Bob Ainsworth MP, former Home Office drugs minister and Secretary of State for Defence, will call for the legalisation and regulation of drugs during a Parliamentary debate he is leading in Westminster Hall, at 2.30pm, Thurs 16th December 2010.

Mr Ainsworth said;

“I have just been reading the Coalition Government’s new Drugs Strategy. It is described by the Home Secretary as fundamentally different to what has gone before; it is not. To the extent that it is different, it is potentially harmful because it retreats from the principle of harm reduction, which has been one of the main reasons for the reduction in acquisitive crime in recent years.

However, prohibition has failed to protect us. Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harms to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit. We spend billions of pounds without preventing the wide availability of drugs. It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists.

As drugs minister in the Home Office I saw how prohibition fails to reduce the harm that drugs cause in the UK, fuelling burglaries, gifting the trade to gangsters and increasing HIV infections. My experience as Defence Secretary, with specific responsibilities in Afghanistan, showed to me that the war on drugs creates the very conditions that perpetuate the illegal trade, while undermining international development and security.

My departure from the front benches gives me the freedom to express my long held view that, whilst it was put in place with the best of intentions, the war on drugs has been nothing short of a disaster.

Politicians and the media need to engage in a genuine and grown up debate about alternatives to prohibition, so that we can build a consensus based on delivering the best outcomes for our children and communities. I call on those on all sides of the debate to support an independent, evidence-based review, exploring all policy options, including: further resourcing the war on drugs, decriminalising the possession of drugs, and legally regulating their production and supply.

One way to do this would be an Impact Assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act in line with the 2002 Home Affairs Select Committee finding – which included David Cameron – for the government to explore alternatives to prohibition, including legal regulation.

The re-legalisation of alcohol in the US after thirteen years of Prohibition was not surrender. It was a pragmatic move based on the government’s need to retake control of the illegal trade from violent gangsters. After 50 years of global drug prohibition it is time for governments throughout the world to repeat this shift with currently illegal drugs.”

This is big. Transform has reactions from various leaders to this news:

Labour’s Paul Flynn MP said;

“This could be a turning point in the failing UK ‘war on drugs.’ Bob Ainsworth is the persuasive, respected voice of the many whose views have been silenced by the demands of ministerial office. Every open rational debate concludes that the UK’s harsh drugs prohibition has delivered the worst outcomes in Europe – deaths, drug crime and billions of pounds wasted.”

This follows a series of events in the UK that have been publicly showing a complete disconnect on the part of the government regarding any semblance of rational basis for drug policy.

As an example, check out UKCIA’s Dirty political tricks and the membership of the ACMD on the recent attempt on the part of the government in the so-called Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.

Buried in the bill was this inoffensive-sounding language:

(a) in sub-paragraph (1), omit the words after “appropriate”, and
(b) omit sub-paragraph (2)

Here’s what that was affecting (italicized part was the portion being cut):

(1) The members of the Advisory Council, of whom there shall be not less than twenty, shall be appointed by the Secretary of State after consultation with such organisations as he considers appropriate, and shall include—

(a) in relation to each of the activities specified in sub-paragraph (2) below, at least one person appearing to the Secretary of State to have wide and recent experience of that activity; and
(b) persons appearing to the Secretary of State to have wide and recent experience of social problems connected with the misuse of drugs.
(2) The activities referred to in sub-paragraph (1)(a) above are—

(a) the practice of medicine (other than veterinary medicine);
(b)the practice of dentistry;
(c) the practice of veterinary medicine;
(d) the practice of pharmacy;
(e) the pharmaceutical industry;
(f) chemistry other than pharmaceutical chemistry.

That’s right. In one unpublicized move, eliminating all independent scientific advice to the government regarding drug policy, because the science and truth didn’t fit their political agenda regarding drug policy.

This, following last year’s sacking of government drug advisor David Nutt for telling the truth about drugs, and the recent Lancet study ranking the harms of various drugs and putting alcohol way ahead of crack and heroin.

All of this has put the UK government on very shaky ground regarding drug policy, even though they have remained adamant and stubbornly resistant to facts.

The new blow of the news today from Bob Ainsworth could have major ripples.

They only have themselves to blame.

… at least to date that I’ve seen.

Teen marijuana use rising after years of decline by Erin Allday at the San Francisco Chronicle.

This article does it all. Swallows every lie from the prohibitionists without question, goes out an interviews only people with a financial advantage to demonizing marijuana, and picks the worst of it.

This is textbook bad journalism. Just read the whole article and you’ll see what I mean.

With so much talk about the potential health benefits of pot, teenagers are increasingly complacent about the risks of marijuana, public health experts say.

“When you talk about the potential health benefits of marijuana, it’s the equivalent of saying heroin is a great pain medication, so you shouldn’t be wary of it,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the study. “A drug may have compounds that have therapeutic benefits, but that in no way decreases its toxic effects.” […]

That’s a dangerous perception, said addiction specialists, who noted that in California, more teenagers are admitted to inpatient addiction programs for marijuana use than for any other drug, including alcohol.

“We had a vote this year about decriminalizing marijuana further. Is it a big surprise that perceived risk is down and daily use is up?” said Dr. John Mendelson, a senior scientist with the Addiction and Pharmacology Research Laboratory at California Pacific Medical Center. “This is the dark side of the medical marijuana movement. The main risk for kids is addiction. And it’s a substantial risk.”

Lie to them.

At least, that appears to be the case from reading her comments in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Nicole Kurash, clinical manager of youth programs at Gateway Rehabilitation Center, which treats up to 500 teens across Southwest Pennsylvania each year, said she had noticed changing attitudes toward marijuana, especially among parents.

“I would definitely say the attitude is much more relaxed than a decade ago,” she said. “We see a number of kids whose parents smoke marijuana. We see parents who say, ‘I don’t mind if they smoke it, but I don’t want them to do anything else.’ ”

While teens seem well aware that tobacco causes cancer, Kurash said, they appear not to realize that marijuana use also has been linked to cancer.

“We hear kids saying, ‘It’s natural. It comes from the ground. It can’t be bad,’ ” she said.

The attitude shift that Kurash noticed was reflected in the survey, which showed a decrease in teens who saw marijuana as carrying “great risk” or who disapproved of using it regularly.

Maybe the teens are better educated than Gateway Rehabilitation Center’s Clinical Manager of Inpatient Youth Programs, with her Master’s Degree and Clinical Inpatient Addictions Counselor certification. They’re either better educated than Nicole Kurash, or better educated than she’d like them to be.

They might have actually read about the largest study done on the subject of marijuana and cancer, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

Maybe Nicole Kurash isn’t lying. Maybe an addictions counselor somehow doesn’t know about the largest study in the world, one that took place four years ago, was funded by the federal government, and widely reported in the press, including health publications and the Washington Post.

Right.

Paul Armentano at NORML: Drug Czar Blames Rising Teen Pot Use On Medical Cannabis Laws Rather Than On His Own Failed Policies

Okay, let me get this straight: California enacted legislation legalizing the physician-supervised use of medical marijuana in 1996 — some fourteen years ago — thus kicking off the national debate that is still taking place today. Between 1996 and 2005, nine additional states enacted similar laws (Alaska, 1999; Colorado, 2000; Hawaii, 2000; Maine, 1999; Montana, 2004; Nevada, 2000; Oregon, 1998; Vermont, 2004; Washington, 1998). Yet, the Drug Czar claims to the national media that this discussion has only been taking place in earnest for “the past couple years”?! Does he really think the public is that stupid?! […]

But wait, it gets even sillier. One statistic gleaned from the Monitoring the Future study that was not emphasized by the Drug Czar (for obvious reasons) was that more than eight out of ten 12th graders report that marijuana is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get — a percentage that has remained constant for three and a half decades! So much for the notion that criminal prohibition is limiting youth marijuana access.

Mike Meno at Marijuana Policy Project:

“It’s really no surprise that more American teenagers are using marijuana and continue to say it’s easy to get. Our government has spent decades refusing to regulate marijuana in order to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers who aren’t required to check customer ID and have no qualms about selling marijuana to young people,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “The continued decline in teen tobacco use is proof that sensible regulations, coupled with honest, and science-based public education can be effective in keeping substances away from young people. It’s time we acknowledge that our current marijuana laws have utterly failed to accomplish one of their primary objectives – to keep marijuana away from young people – and do the right thing by regulating marijuana, bringing its sale under the rule of law, and working to reduce the unfettered access to marijuana our broken laws have given teenagers.”

Jacob Sullum at Hit and Run: Drug Czar Blames Cancer and AIDS Patients for Increase in Pot Use by Teenagers

The timing of the increase in marijuana use does not seem to fit this theory. States began legalizing the medical use of marijuana in 1996, after which past-month marijuana use among high school seniors went up and down until 2003, when it began a decline that continued until 2007. Furthermore, as the Drug Policy Alliance’s Bill Piper points out, states that have liberalized their marijuana policies have not seen noticeably bigger increases in use than states that have not

Mason Tvert, writing at FireDogLake: Teen Marijuana Use Up, Alcohol Use Down – A Good Thing?

According to the annual Monitoring the Future survey released today by the National Institutes of Health, marijuana use is up and alcohol use is down amongst America’s teens.

Although U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske has taken to the airwaves to tell us “we should be very concerned about these marijuana numbers,” those numbers might actually be indicative of progress. […]

Not surprisingly, the drug czar is singling out medical marijuana laws and the debate surrounding them as the be-all-end-all cause of teens’ ease in attitude toward marijuana. This from a guy overseeing a major anti-marijuana ad campaign that has actually been found to increase the likelihood that those frequently exposed to the ads will experiment with marijuana. And when’s the last time you heard him complain about all the TV ads and billboards — visible to young and older people alike — that tout beer and liquor as the key to a good time. . . .

We must do a better job of lying to teens or they might see through all the lies we told them before.

White House Drug Czar: Teen Marijuana Use on the Rise

“We have been telling young people, particularly for the past couple years, that marijuana is medicine,” the former Seattle police chief argued. “So it shouldn’t be a great surprise to us that young people are now misperceiving the dangers or the risks around marijuana.”

That’s right. We must stop helping sick and dying people and stop telling the truth about the medical value of marijuana, or young people will start to realize that marijuana isn’t as bad as we’ve been telling them!

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In what perverse world is that the basis for drug policy?

There’s a fascinating article in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press: They drink more, and you pay less by Bob Shaw.

It’s a concept that can seem counterintuitive, yet actually makes perfect sense — with some people who are dependent on a drug, maintenance of that dependence is a better form of harm reduction than continually attempting forced abstinence.

In this case, the drug is alcohol.

But while the drinking binges continue for Britton and the 59 other alcoholics at St. Anthony, the spending binges have ended. The St. Paul “wet house” is slashing the public’s financial burden for those men by more than 80 percent — saving about $5 million a year.

In a sense, St. Anthony wins the war against alcoholism by surrendering. The facility does what no treatment program will do — allow some of the state’s worst drunks to keep drinking.

That’s how it inspires their respect. Once the street drunks have food, housing and alcohol, they almost completely stop the barroom fights, the drunken driving, the late-night trips to emergency rooms.

This is not a one-size-fits-all situation. For many drunks, getting off the bottle for good is possible and preferable. But for some — those who return again and again and don’t respond to treatment — it’s better both for the individual and for society.

Consider Marion Hagerman. In his 39 years of drinking, the 54-year-old has been arrested about 60 times. He has kept drinking despite six drunken-driving convictions and six 28-day treatment sessions.

His drinking has cost the public more than $450,000. And since he was admitted to St. Anthony’s two years ago?

Nothing. Not a single arrest, detox stay or emergency-room visit.

Something to think about.

And in the larger drug policy arena, it’s also important to remember that one size doesn’t fit all. Each drug is different, and not all users are the same.