Drug WarRant

To the opponents of legalization that want us to prove exactly how many people will use which drugs with legalization, and to the concern trolls that suggest that we’d do better if we addressed a laundry list of specific questions, the answer is “forget it.”

If there’s anything the recent RAND report demonstrates, it’s that there’s a whole lot of uncertainty that comes with legalization. In part due to the interminable length of time that this drug war has been foisted upon us, and in part due to the ubiquitous global reach of the American drug war machine, we don’t have a modern day legalization analogue available that doesn’t suffer from the potential criticism of being insufficiently similar to our situation.

But unlike what the intellectually dishonest Rosalie Liccardo Pacula (co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center) would have you believe, neither a lack of certainty nor a lack of specificity are things to fear.

We will enter into legalization and we will learn from it. We’ll tinker and adjust. If suddenly there’s an increase in stoned driving crashes (and there won’t be), we’ll address that specifically. If there’s an overwhelming increase in pot use by 12-year-olds (and there won’t be), we’ll address that specifically. We’ll be able to operate surgically, because we’ll no longer be pulverizing the patient from operating by sledgehammer.

Despite the uncertainty, there’s a lot we do know. We live in a post-Reefer Madness world, and the same lies that once hoodwinked the people are getting harder to push. We’re not going into legalization blind. We know that our journey is relatively safe; we just don’t know exactly where it’s going.

And Beau Kilmer, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Robert J. MacCoun, Peter H. Reuter and all the other academics who note the lack of certainty in their calculations, should be absolutely (in private, of course, not betraying their personal biases) dancing with joy at the notion of legalized pot in California. Here, at last — a large human laboratory to truly test how a modern legalized cannabis system can work. And the provisions to let different localities try different options? Bonus! I am thinking that this is more incredible INPUT than even Johnny 5 could handle.

Oh, sure, California’s not perfect; what we learn there may not apply exactly to North Dakota. And results will still be a bit watered down and muddied by the steady rain of federal urinations and defecations. But there will be knowledge! And a little less uncertainty.

But isn’t first moving into this uncertainty scary?

It might be if the current system were nirvana. If our drug policy was all butterflies and daffodils, instead of death, destruction, incarceration, racism, and corruption, then sure — why would we want to try a different approach whose results were partially unknown?

But it’s clear to all who care to look, and who are not blinded by the golden shower of drug war cash, that we are in a world of hurt. We don’t need to tinker with prohibition. We need to burn it and then take the ashes and spread them to the far corners of the universe.

California is a first crack in the fecal façade of prohibition. The drug warriors are desperately trying to plug that crack to avoid even a glimpse of a different approach.

Well, guess what. They’ve had decades of their failed projectile diarrhea, upon which they pathetically dab drops of perfume in an effort to prove that their shit don’t stink.

After all those years, they’ve got nothing. No evidence of a workable system. And not a leg to stand on when opposing a radically safe alternative to prohibition like regulated legalization.

Their time is finally coming to an end. We need to hasten it and reduce the damage as much as we can by speaking out and bringing the truth to the people, and letting them know that yes, there will be some uncertainties in the journey, but that the alternative — keeping things as they are now — is an unspeakably hideous path.

We need immediate action here regarding a serious danger to our nation’s highways.

Pork Rinds.

Truck driver chokes on pork rinds, ends in ditch

The driver of a FedEx tractor-trailer rig lost control of his truck on Interstate 5 after choking on some spicy pork rinds, jackknifed and came to a stop in a muddy ditch, says a Washington State Patrol trooper. […]

The trooper says the truck didn’t hit any vehicles. Leary says the driver will be cited for driving with wheels off the roadway.

Clearly, this is something that needs to be addressed by the legislature immediately. We need “per se” laws against the possession (including internal possession) of pork rinds, and possibly all other spicy snack foods.

Sure, this time nobody was hurt, but what if there were a dozen children crushed under that jackknifed truck? And all you could charge the driver with was “driving with wheels off the roadway”?

We’ve got to be able to bring the full force of the law against those who eat pork rinds and drive. It isn’t always easy to tell when a driver is under the influence of a pork rind until it’s too late and hundreds of children have been smeared across the highway. We need the law to allow for searches of vehicles for empty pork rind packages, and the authority to pump the stomachs of drivers for evidence of formerly crispy pork fat.

It’s for the children.

Transform reports about an interesting poll that was conducted recently of British adults regarding drug policy. Instead of the usual legalize or not question, they asked people to give options for each drug:

• Light regulation (drugs sold like tobacco and alcohol are now)
• Strict government control and regulation (an example of how government could heavily regulate a legal market in an attempt to minimise harm)
• Prohibition (the current status of illegal drugs)

The results are interesting and could lead to a larger discussion.

I’d like to see a poll done here using similar terms. I think that too often a lot of people out there see prohibition as regulation, when it’s not. By offering regulation as a distinct alternative to prohibition, it requires a different level of thinking.

There have been a lot of media reports in the past few days talking about the new RAND study that shows how California legalization will result in as much as an 80% decrease in marijuana prices and doubling of marijuana use.

Except, of course, that the RAND report doesn’t really say that at all.

Altered State? Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets. By: Beau Kilmer, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Robert J. MacCoun, Peter H. Reuter

It’s a 55 page report with lots of interesting stuff in it, but when it comes to an actual projection of change in marijuana use with legalization, they have absolutely no idea.

Here’s what they’re pretty sure they know:

Consumption will increase, but it is unclear how much because we know neither the shape of the demand curve nor the level of tax evasion (which reduces revenues and the prices that consumers face).

So much for the doom reports about the entire state being stoned all the time.

However, that doesn’t make a very interesting report, so Rand decided to make up some shit.

Thus, in the absence of marijuana-specific information, we multiply our participation elasticity of –0.3 by 1.75 to proxy the total elasticity. After accounting for possible income effects, we settle on a baseline total price elasticity of –0.54.

Add to this even more uncertainty…

Once again, readers should not interpret our use of these two particular demand curves, the 25-percent evasion rate, or the $50-per-ounce excise tax as signaling what we think the most likely scenario will be. The purpose of Figure 4.2 is only to demonstrate how much additional uncertainty there is about revenue and consumption estimates, above and beyond that already illustrated in Figure 4.1, when one recognizes that none of the other model parameters is known with certainty.

So, where do media get the notion that the RAND study says that marijuana use will double?

A central question about legalization is whether it will make marijuana consumption go up a little or a lot. The central point of Chapter Four is that it is hard to answer that question because there is great uncertainty about how much consumption will increase. However, it is also hard to answer that question because different people have different thresholds for distinguishing between “a little” and “a lot.”

For the sake of exposition, we will consider a doubling in consumption as a bright line for defining whether consumption changes are small or large.

Yep. They just made up that figure for the purpose of argument.

Now, they probably should have stopped there, but no, they decided to apply these completely imaginary numbers to real world situations and estimate, for example, how many more people would need treatment for marijuana if legalized (based, of course, on nothing).

At points, this discussion gets completely surreal. Let’s take a look at the discussion on drugged driving. It starts out fine…

While driving under the influence of marijuana or any other intoxicating substance can be risky, a question remains about whether marijuana use impairs individuals sufficiently to cause crashes and fatalities. While there is significant experimental literature suggesting a diminished effect on response rates and performance under very strictly controlled conditions, evidence from epidemiological studies has been less conclusive (Ramaekers et al., 2004; Blows et al., 2005).

OK, that’s good. According to actual facts and studies, there’s no real significant causal evidence between pot smoking and car crashes. And, as we know from above, there’s no real evidence to show a significant increase in pot use with legalization, let alone stoned driving.

So?… (Check out the gymnastics in this next bit.)

However, a simple calculation suggests that, if someone believes that marijuana is causally responsible for many crashes that involve marijuana using drivers, legalization’s effect on crashes could be a first-order concern for them. […]

There is no empirical evidence concerning an elasticity of fatal accident rates with respect to marijuana price, prevalence, or quantity consumed, and, as we have underscored repeatedly, there is enormous uncertainty concerning how legalization might affect those outcomes.

However, 50- or 100-percent increases in use cannot be ruled out; nor can the possibility that marijuana-involved traffic crashes would increase proportionally with use. So it would be hard to dismiss out of hand worries that marijuana legalization could increase traffic fatalities by at least 60 per year…

If someone actually said the above to me in person, I would accuse them of being high and having one of those weird free association monologues. How does an academic actually find the guts to say something that absurd? It’s embarrassing.

What if I were to say: “We have no evidence to show that stepping on a crack in the sidewalk will break your mother’s back or how often people step on a crack, yet if someone believes crack-stepping leads to back-breaking, then it would be hard to dismiss out of hand the concern that an increase in sidewalks could increase the number of disabled matrons by at least 60 per year.” People would think I was crazy.

Again, remember that RAND at least tells the truth in the report about not knowing anything. Which is good. But given how the press loves fresh meat, it appears that they then had to go ahead and give projections that they knew were pulled out of their asses, and that they probably knew would be misused in the press.

RAND tries to pretend that it’s a nonpartisan and unbiased research center, but as long as it employs people like Rosalie Pacula, who has acted time and again like the RAND Drug Policy Research Center is her own personal tool for opposing legalization, it is an organization with absolutely no credibility.

She couldn’t even resist putting in her own personal opinions in the AP story about the RAND study.

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, who co-directs the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, acknowledged that as a California voter, she was uncomfortable with “the lack of specificity” in both the ballot measure and the bill that would have put pot in the same regulatory category as alcohol.

“Neither was sufficient for us to get an idea of what the effect of this was, and as a voter that was disturbing to me,” she said.

At least the other authors of the study, while often legitimately criticized for being afraid to give proper consideration to prohibition alternatives, have the integrity to act like researchers. Pacula is a serious blight on the organization.

Residents’ tips lead to narcotics raids

Police Chief Kevin Kelso is thrilled with his tip line where people can call in and have their neighbor raided, and says the calls are “rolling in.”

He has also weathered some criticism because he’s asking the public to report crime. One such letter from former Michigan police officer Howard Wooldridge, takes Kelso to task for asking people to “snitch on” their neighbors and referred to Seguin as a “police state” town.

Kelso shrugs it off.

Wooldridge, he notes, founded Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which advocates an end to all drug prohibition instead of prosecution of drug offenders.

“If, as I’ve heard, Mr. Wooldridge favors giving up instead of fighting drugs on our streets and in our neighborhoods, he might not mind having a crack house next door to his home and his family,” Kelso said. “I know I wouldn’t like it and I don’t think Seguin residents should tolerate it. Together, as a team, I believe we can stop it.”

Wow. That’s a pretty hilarious misstatement of Howard’s position.

It’s also pretty weak, when you can’t actually face the position of your opponent and have to make one up instead.

In the Seattle Times, Roger A. Roffman writes Time to answer concerns to advance marijuana policy reform

In it, he implies that he finds common cause with marijuana reform, but has some important advice for us.

I believe, however, that we’ll only see success in marijuana policy reform when those in the movement expand the goals they’re trying to achieve. The objective needs to be more than protecting civil liberties. It must also include the goal of protecting those who are vulnerable.

I suspect that chiefs of police, prosecuting attorneys, medical societies, educators, and parents will once again join in supporting change in the marijuana possession laws if those reforms include a number of goals:

• Protecting adult civil liberties, • Effectively preventing marijuana’s harms to children and adolescents,
• Acknowledging the reality of marijuana dependence and addressing its prevention and treatment,
• Proposing credible prevention of accidents because of driving while stoned, and
• Identifying specific health risks from pot use in vulnerable groups (for example, individuals with cardiovascular disease).

It’s time for the conversation to bring all of these goals to the table.

This is first-class “concern troll” advice, which does nothing but prop up empty prohibitionist arguments in the guise of schooling us reformers on being better at crafting reform.

Let’s take them one at a time.

• Protecting adult civil liberties, • Effectively preventing marijuana’s harms to children and adolescents,

As far as I know, reformers have been united in wanting to reduce the access of marijuana for children. After all, we are the ones calling for age restrictions. And the “effectively preventing” statement? That’s an obvious argument fallacy. Requiring reformers to reach that bar is stupid — obviously kids will find ways to circumvent restrictions (some always do). What’s clear (and already proven from example in other societies) is that our approach is more likely to reduce the harms to children that that of the prohibitionists.

Why aren’t the prohibitionists being asked to justify how their policy has worked — how strict marijuana laws have “effectively prevented” marijuana’s harms to children?

• Acknowledging the reality of marijuana dependence and addressing its prevention and treatment,

The fact is that the ones failing to acknowledge the truth about marijuana dependence are the prohibitionists. Over and over, they use the lies about treatment statistics as “proof” that marijuana is dangerous and requires treatment. We can’t have a reasonable discussion about marijuana and dependency as long as marijuana is illegal and is a huge opportunistic cash cow to the treatment industry through criminal justice referrals.

• Proposing credible prevention of accidents because of driving while stoned,

Check out the weaselly wording of that one. Roffman wants us to craft a plan to prevent all the accidents that will occur from driving while stoned. This, while the current head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy can’t even come up with any evidence of a problem from stoned driving without falsifying data.

First, show us the problem. Second, why has it been so difficult for all the researchers in the government who work on this (and lots have been) to come up with a clear identifier of when marijuana causes driving impairment? Shouldn’t that be the source of the “solution” for the “problem”? Why, instead, has the government decided to push for “per se” laws? Perhaps because nobody can show us the extent of the problem?

• Identifying specific health risks from pot use in vulnerable groups (for example, individuals with cardiovascular disease).

For years, the federal government has funded just about any research regarding marijuana as long as it was designed to find something wrong with marijuana. (Forget about research for its benefits!) The federal government does a fine job of touting any adverse findings (even as it ignores all those findings which accidentally show benefits from marijuana). What more does Roffman want from us?

…

There’s a lot more that we reformers need to do to counter the propaganda put forward by decades of prohibitionist rule (and sometimes we may have to stoop to answering stupid questions), but what we don’t need is advice that actually props up that propaganda.

Thanks, but no thanks, Roger.

Still on the road, but hoped to have more wifi access by now. Unfortunately, the friends I’m staying with in Chicago have temporarily lost their wifi, so I’m finally blogging in the lobby of the theatre before my show.

Norm Stamper comes to the rescue of California NAACP with this strong OpEd in the Huffington Post: The Politics of Cannabis and Color

But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including “more than 20 African American religious and community leaders” headed by one Bishop Ron Allen.

Mr. Allen’s statement was illogical, and insulting and condescending to the multitudes of African American civic leaders, including law enforcement officers and members of the clergy, who are working to end a drug war that has had devastating effects on communities of color. […]

As Huffman points out, ending the drug war — or, more modestly, bringing a halt to the indisputable madness of marijuana prohibition — is imperative if we are to help halt the institutionalized denial of civil rights and civil liberties in African American communities.

Yet, speaking as “President and CEO” of the “International Faith-Based Coalition,” a pro-drug war organization that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere to combat Proposition 19, Bishop Allen addressed a news conference on the steps of the state capital. “Why would the NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?” he said. “It’s going to cause crime to go up,” he said. “There will be more drug babies,” he said. Huffman “must resign,” he said.

Stop and think, Mr. Allen: Huffman was hardly urging blacks to “stay high,” or even to pick up a single joint; marijuana legalization will cause crime to go down, not up; and there will be fewer drug babies.

You can sign a petition to support the California NAACP here.

It seems unlikely that Illinois State Representative Jim Stacia is going to vote in favor of medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana is a cruel hoax. Supporters oppose the use of purified chemical components of marijuana smoke and insist on “smoked dope” or nothing. That should be the first clue that this is nothing but a “sham”. You can’t deliver medicine safely by smoking it.

Marijuana potency is nearly three times more than it was in 1983, and when it’s smoked, its potency is uncontrolled. In 2006 there were 33,854 admissions to treatment centers here in Illinois for marijuana addiction and there is little doubt that marijuana is a gateway drug to cocaine and heroin.

Many have e-mailed me that I better support this “or else”. Not only will I not support it, I will speak passionately against it.

Easy answers to stupid questions. No.

The question? Could a $1.50 marijuana joint doom Prop. 19 in California?

Easy answers to stupid questions, part 2. No.

The question? Legalizing Pot in California: Users Could Double, Are There Health Risks?

This is an open thread

The new Director of the UNODC

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/07/giant-leap-backwards-as-ban-ki-moon.html

I’m away from wifi and trying to post from my iPhone..

George Will has a fascinating and strange piece about prohibition in the Washington Post.
“Another round of Prohibition, anyone?”
http://bit.ly/9bDpF8

After the first few years, alcohol consumption dropped only 30 percent. Soon smugglers were outrunning the Coast Guard ships in advanced speedboats, and courts inundated by violations of Prohibition began to resort to plea bargains to speed “enforcement” of laws so unenforceable that Detroit became known as the City on a Still.

Prohibition agents cherished $1,800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them.

[…]

Now that ambitious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans — from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use — Okrent’s book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences.

I’m not sure how George Will is able to write while sharing a room with a two- ton unseen elephant.

….
Thanks, Daniel

Alice Huffman, President of the California NAACP: Marijuana Law Reform Is a Civil Rights Issue

As leaders of the California NAACP, it is our mission to eradicate injustice and continue the fight for civil rights and social justice wherever and whenever we can. We are therefore compelled to speak out against another war, the so called “war on drugs.” To be clear, this is not a war on the drug lords and violent cartels, this is a war that disproportionately affects young men and women and the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African-Americans.

We reject the oft-repeated but deceptive argument that there are only two choices for addressing drugs — heavy handed law enforcement or total permissiveness. Substance abuse and addiction are American problems that affect every socioeconomic group, and meaningful public health and safety strategies are needed to address it. However, law enforcement strategies that target poor Blacks and Latinos and cause them to bear the burden and shame of arrest, prosecution and conviction for marijuana offenses must stop.

Black Church Coalition Condemns NAACP Support For Pot Legalization

A nationwide coalition of 34,000 minority churches is condemning the California NAACP for supporting a state ballot initiative that would legalize recreational use of marijuana. […]

But the Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, says drugs have “ravaged” the black community with too much violence and death to consider legalization.

Evans says his church will no longer contribute to the NAACP because of its position on marijuana.

Once again, the church (or at least those represented here) has no interest in actually addressing the issues.