Drug WarRant

There’s an OpEd at the Dakota Voice: Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No by Cully Stimson of the Heritage Foundation. The “Legal Memorandum,” as it’s called there, is also available at the Heritage Site and probably easier to read there.

Now this Cully Stimson is no ordinary bloke. This is a “serious” guy with “serious” credentials. Check out his bio and you’ll see. Not a lot of drug policy experience, true, but some real serious education and high-level world experience in a lot of areas including some major positions in criminal justice fields. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that he managed to do all that he has done in one lifetime.

I point this out to make it clear that what he puts in this legal memorandum is not the result of ignorance.

The only way this article happens is through intentional and malicious manipulation of the facts in order to come up with the conclusion desired by the Heritage Foundation.

Oh, in places it sounds good. Sure. Like it’s been written by someone who’s done some research. But any analysis of any section of it, and it all falls apart.

Start with his analysis of our approach…

The current campaign, like previous efforts, downplays the well-documented harms of marijuana trafficking and use while promising benefits ranging from reduced crime to additional tax revenue. In particular, supporters of the initiative make five bold claims:

1. “Marijuana is safe and non-addictive.”
2. “Marijuana prohibition makes no more sense than alcohol prohibition did in the early 1900s.”
3. “The government’s efforts to combat illegal drugs have been a total failure.”
4. “The money spent on government efforts to combat the illegal drug trade can be better spent on substance abuse and treatment for the allegedly few marijuana users who abuse the drug.”
5. “Tax revenue collected from marijuana sales would substantially outweigh the social costs of legalization.”[3]

As this paper details, all five claims are demonstrably false or, based on the best evidence, highly dubious.

Check out the things Stimson snuck in there…. “downplays the well-documented harms of marijuana trafficking and use.” Of course, the well-documented harms of marijuana trafficking are the result of prohibition and we haven’t been downplaying that at all, and the well-documented harms of marijuana use are not-so-well-documented.

As far as the 5 things he says we’re claiming, on 1 he’s right (although some of us would insert “when used responsibly.” Number 2? Absolutely. Same with number 3. Number 4 is badly worded and I’d bet some of us would wonder about wasting a lot of money on treatment for marijuana. But in general, yes, these are claims we make and can prove, and Stimson’s memorandum does nothing to disprove them.

But number 5? Nobody I know makes this claim. “Tax revenue collected from marijuana sales would substantially outweigh the social costs of legalization.” That’s because we don’t have to. What we know for a fact is that the savings in reduced criminal justice costs and the societal savings in black market violence way more than makes up for any supposed social costs of legalization (which nobody has been able to identify with any certainty), even if there is not a single penny in tax revenue.

Our opponents like to create this straw man, and then supposedly shoot it down by showing that the potential tax revenue is uncertain. From our perspective, tax revenue is just a carrot to stick in front of the nose to get the approval/attention of some, but we don’t need it to achieve a net benefit to society.

I could take his entire memorandum apart piece by piece, but it doesn’t really deserve it. I’ll be happy to address any part of it you request, or if he stops by, I’ll do the same. In the meantime, you can have fun with it in comments.

I do want to point out the most amazing section of this article, where Stimson practically has to alter the physical makeup of the universe in order for his argument to work…

Unsafe in Any Amount: How Marijuana Is Not Like Alcohol

Marijuana advocates have had some success peddling the notion that marijuana is a “soft” drug, similar to alcohol, and fundamentally different from “hard” drugs like cocaine or heroin. It is true that marijuana is not the most dangerous of the commonly abused drugs, but that is not to say that it is safe. Indeed, marijuana shares more in common with the “hard” drugs than it does with alcohol.

A common argument for legalization is that smoking marijuana is no more dangerous than drinking alcohol and that prohibiting the use of marijuana is therefore no more justified than the prohibition of alcohol. As Jacob Sullum, author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, writes:

Americans understood the problems associated with alcohol abuse, but they also understood the problems associated with Prohibition, which included violence, organized crime, official corruption, the erosion of civil liberties, disrespect for the law, and injuries and deaths caused by tainted black-market booze. They decided that these unintended side effects far outweighed whatever harms Prohibition prevented by discouraging drinking. The same sort of analysis today would show that the harm caused by drug prohibition far outweighs the harm it prevents, even without taking into account the value to each individual of being sovereign over his own body and mind.[7]

At first blush, this argument is appealing, especially to those wary of over-regulation by government. But it overlooks the enormous difference between alcohol and marijuana.

Legalization advocates claim that marijuana and alcohol are mild intoxicants and so should be regulated similarly; but as the experience of nearly every culture, over the thousands of years of human history, demonstrates, alcohol is different. Nearly every culture has its own alcoholic preparations, and nearly all have successfully regulated alcohol consumption through cultural norms. The same cannot be said of marijuana. There are several possible explanations for alcohol’s unique status: For most people, it is not addictive; it is rarely consumed to the point of intoxication; low-level consumption is consistent with most manual and intellectual tasks; it has several positive health benefits; and it is formed by the fermentation of many common substances and easily metabolized by the body.

You getting this? This is amazing stuff. But he’s not done.

Alcohol differs from marijuana in several crucial respects. First, marijuana is far more likely to cause addiction. Second, it is usually consumed to the point of intoxication. Third, it has no known general healthful properties, though it may have some palliative effects. Fourth, it is toxic and deleterious to health. Thus, while it is true that both alcohol and marijuana are less intoxicating than other mood-altering drugs, that is not to say that marijuana is especially similar to alcohol or that its use is healthy or even safe.

In fact, compared to alcohol, marijuana is not safe. Long-term, moderate consumption of alcohol carries few health risks and even offers some significant benefits. […]

To equate marijuana use with alcohol consumption is, at best, uninformed and, at worst, actively misleading. Only in the most superficial ways are the two substances alike, and they differ in every way that counts: addictiveness, toxicity, health effects, and risk of intoxication.

Not a single bit of that is connected to reality.

I find myself trying to imagine the discussion that went on in the Heritage Foundation when they assigned this article to Cully. “OK, here’s the deal… We really don’t like the people who like marijuana. This is a cultural battle, but we’re supposed to be a think tank, so we can’t say keep it illegal because it’s immoral or because we don’t like those people. We need to make it look like this is a researched academic paper that comes to this indisputable conclusion. Now we’re about small government, so you’re going to have to really lay it on about marijuana being so dangerous that we have no choice but to use government to outlaw it. And we all like to drink, so you’ve got to show that alcohol is OK, while marijuana is not. And… go!”

Wonder how it feels to sell your soul?

Wednesday, the Arizona Cardinals donated $10,000 to the organization called Keep AZ Drug Free, which opposes a medical marijuana bill.

This is from a football organization on their fifth year of a beer sponsorship deal with Anheuser-Busch.

Budweiser and Bud Light will serve as the exclusive alcohol sponsors of the club, and a “Budweiser Red Zone” will occupy a place in the south end zone of the stadium. Signage on the video display boards and elsewhere is also part of the deal.

The Drug Czar:

The data also show that nearly 21 million people in the U.S. needed treatment for substance abuse. However, 95 percent of this group felt they did not need treatment

Makes you wonder.

Every year, whenever a new set of numbers comes out regarding illicit drugs, the drug warriors are ready to pounce. Their staff combs through the numbers and looks for specific ones (out of thousands) to cherry-pick. It’s a fun and easy game for them, because it doesn’t matter which way the numbers go.

1. If drug use is some category is up, then We Need to Push Harder with the Drug War! With More Funding!
2. If drug use in some category is down, then it’s See, the Drug War is working! We Need More Funding to Fix the Other Areas!

Once in a while, as Eric Sterling notes, they’ll attempt to use the numbers another way to attack opponents, such as Kerlikowske did yesterday when discussing the increase in marijuana use among teens aged 12-17.

“I can absolutely not rule out this constant discussion of so-called medical marijuana, marijuana legalization and the downplaying of marijuana harms that is prevalent in the media,”

Don’t you love it? The phrase “absolutely not rule out” is pure gold. It means nothing, yet sounds so definitive. I can absolutely not rule out the existence of a spaghetti monster. I can absolutely not rule out the possibility that our political leaders have been taken over by Red Lectroids from Planet 10.

The numbers game is starting to get old, even for the media. John Cloud, in the Health Section of Time Magazine, writes, Is Drug Use Really on the Rise?

Each year when the federal government releases new statistics on drug use, the bad news always gets reported first. That’s partly because bad news is always a better story than good news. It’s also partly because government anti-drug agencies depend on bad news to maintain funding levels from Congress, so they publicize danger signs first.

Whoa. Not the usual obedient repetition of drug czar proclamations in the media that we had in the past.

The Time article takes the scary numbers and puts them in a little more perspective:

As for other drugs: use of alcohol is unchanged, while the decline in tobacco use has stalled. Also, a headline buried in the SAMHSA report: the number of people who begin to use illegal drugs each day has not changed from last year. Every day, approximately 8,500 Americans use an illegal drug for the first time. Nearly 60% of these people are smoking pot for the first time. These figures are similar to the numbers of the past few years. The average age at which an American first smokes pot? Not 12 or 13, as scary reports would suggest, but 17.

Finally, the number of Americans who report being dependent on substances has been stable since 2002 — about 22 million of us are dependent. It’s still too high, but let’s all take a deep breath. With or without a bong at hand.

Nice to see some realism.

Part of the problem with all of these numbers games anyway is that generally, the ONDCP is obsessing over the wrong numbers.

The goal of the ONDCP, as mandated by Congress, is to reduce the number of people using illicit drugs. That is a bad, and even destructive, goal. With the incentive being to find quick ways to reduce large numbers, the focus isn’t on the people who need help, but rather with the casual (non-problematic) user where the ONDCP may be able to scare them off by tough enforcement talk or propaganda.

If you’re going to have a drug policy entity at the federal level to solve the “drug problem,” then its goal should be to reduce harm, not reduce level of use. In that situation the drug czar’s office would have no interest in responsible recreational users, and would focus on both the aspects of drug abuse and drug prohibition that are harmful.

See the article at Just Say Now with the details.

He does a great job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBV4JprZPTM

One of the huge problems with our criminal justice system now is that sentencing has very little connection to actual benefit to society (particularly with the drug war thrown in).

SentenceSpeak discusses an interesting sentencing factor in Missouri:

It is the first state to provide judges with defendant-specific data on what particular sentences would cost the taxpayers, and on the likelihood that the person in the dock will reoffend.

Experts say Missouri is the only state to distribute an invoice on a case-by-case basis. …

“We’re seeing a trend where judges are asking for more evidence about best practices,” said Greg Hurley, of the National Center for State Courts. “They are looking at an offender’s track record and other predictive data that may show which treatments or programs may work best to cut down on recidivism.”

Stowe asks:

Could this become a new trend in sentencing? Granted, the cost of a sentence shouldn’t be the only factor judges consider, but judges should go into sentencing armed with information that allows them to do a reasoned cost-benefit analysis. That way, judges can help taxpayers spend less on people who don’t need expensive prison terms, and spend more on prison sentences for people who are dangerous or highly likely to reoffend.

I like this, but I think, as a society, we should attempt to go even a step further.

Most of the choices regarding the use of sentencing dollars actually occur before it gets to the judge’s often limited sentencing options. The real abuses of sentencing and lack of attention to cost tend to occur at the level of prosecution (not only in the decision of what sentencing to push for, but also in the discretion of what cases should be prosecuted).

I’ve often dreamed of a day where a District Attorney would have to face the public and defend his or her use of “prison years”:

This year, we reduced the number of prison years sentenced by 6%, saving the taxpayers money, while focusing on the most dangerous criminals. 93% of all prison years went to those convicted of violent crimes, and we reduced the anticipated prison years for those over 50 years old (which are more expensive and less beneficial) by 4%. Our office is committed to providing justice and contributing to public safety in a cost-defensible manner, unlike the past where it was like a contest to get the most sentencing, regardless of cost or value to society.

I’d like to further discuss the earlier post about Alcohol lobby funding the Prop 19 opposition.

First. I like alcohol. I think that alcohol, used responsibly, just like any other drug, has a wonderful place in our society. Personally, I’m a big fan of Tanqueray and Tonic, as well as a variety of top-notch single-malt scotches. I like a Guinness with fish and chips, and once in a while I enjoy experimenting with craft beers. I have no interest in boycotting alcohol because of who or what they fund.

Second. I really have no fundamental objection to the alcohol industry funding opposition to marijuana legalization. From their perspective, that’s just a good business decision. I don’t like it, and it’s not good for consumers, but I support their right to do it.

Here’s the important part. Rather than trying to get the alcohol industry to stop funding legalization opposition, we need to spread the word that alcohol funds legalization opposition.

Here’s why… When people see that alcohol is afraid of marijuana, they’ll make the connection that marijuana legalization will result in a reduction in alcohol use (and possibly in some of the problems associated with alcohol). This is a positive perception change for us.

Additionally, they’ll start to question what the motivations are for others who fund marijuana opposition, such as the Sheriffs and Narcotics officers.

Alcohol is a business. They’re supposed to make decisions based on the bottom line. Law enforcement, on the other hand, is a service to the people that is required to respond to the public benefit, not bottom line.

Law enforcement associations have enjoyed an unfair advantage, because most people assume that they are following their legally mandated mission of public service when they talk about an issue. They don’t understand that the officers are protecting their own bottom line.

The alcohol lobby funding is a blessing for us. It allows us to paint the truth in a way that the people may understand:

Alcohol and Law Enforcement industries naturally oppose legalization because it hurts their revenues.

Press Release from Mike Meno at MPP:

Alcohol Lobby Teams with Law Enforcement to Fund Anti-Marijuana Campaign

California Beer and Beverage Distributors Give $10K to “No On Proposition 19” Campaign in Attempt to Kill the Competition

On September 7, a major new front opened up in the campaign for Proposition 19, the ballot measure to tax and regulate marijuana in California. On that day, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors made a $10,000 contribution to a committee opposing Proposition 19.

The alcohol lobby now joins the other major two funders of the anti-Prop 19 campaign: the California Police Chiefs Association ($30,000) and the California Narcotics Officer’s Association ($20,500). Yep, it’s all about financial self-interest.

It’s no surprise that the alcohol lobby would oppose marijuana legalization — they know very well that marijuana can be an excellent substitute for alcohol for many people (which could dramatically reduce the health costs related to alcohol while reducing the profits to alcohol distributors). It is a bit surprising that they apparently didn’t hide it better.

So, to recap, if you’re opposed to Prop 19, you’re on the side of the narcs, the cartels, the sheriffs, and the booze industry.

Already we have ex-Presidents Vicente Fox (Mexico), Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), Cesar Gaviria (Colombia), and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brasil) calling for legalization and the end of the war on drugs.

Add ex-Premier Felipe Conzalez of Spain to the list.

Spanish ex-premier calls for legalising drugs worldwide

Spain’s former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez Tuesday called for an international treaty to legalise drugs as a way to end the deadly wars between trafficking cartels. […]

Gonzalez, who was Socialist prime minister from 1982 to 1996, noted the consequences of Prohibition against alcohol in the United States in the early 20th century, when gangsters caused “thousands of deaths.”

“When did this violence end? Not when they put the heads of the crime gangs in prison for tax fraud, but when Prohibition ended and the sale of alcohol was legal,” he said.

He acknowleged that “no country can take this decision (to legalise drugs) unilaterally without an extremely serious (political) cost for its leaders.

“What is needed therefore is an international treaty that is respected by all,” he said.

I’m extremely pleased that legalization is getting this degree of international attention and interest. Still, sure would be nice if some leaders would grow a pair while in office.