Drug WarRant

A draft of the delayed National Drug Control Strategy that was due in February has surfaced, and the Drug Czar is not looking good.

As Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reports:

These have been tough times for White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske. After spending much of his first year in office crafting a new anti-drug strategy, he had hoped to unveil it two months ago with President Obama. But Kerlikowske couldn’t get on Obama’s schedule. When he pressed, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel directed him to Vice President Joe Biden, say two Kerlikowske advisers who asked not to be identified talking about an internal matter. But after agreeing to a joint announcement, Biden had to cancel at the last minute when the health-care bill landed on the president’s desk. Appearing before a House subcommittee recently, Kerlikowske got hammered for not having yet produced the drug-control strategy that his office was charged with releasing by last Feb. 1. […]

The new strategy, a copy of which NEWSWEEK obtained, sets a goal of reducing youth drug use by 15 percent in the next five years, and it asserts a commitment to “community-oriented” prevention programs and early drug-abuse screening by health-care providers. But even some administration officials say achieving these goals is unlikely given the budget’s modest prevention increases. “We are missing an opportunity,” says Kerlikowske’s chief deputy, A. Thomas McClellan, who is resigning after less than a year on the job. […]

Critics are raising questions about whether Kerlikowske’s office–with a staff of about 100 and a budget of $400 million–still serves a vital function.

Ouch.

Here’s the draft of the strategy. Check it out for yourself.

Let’s start with the Preface by Director Kerlikowske:

The development of this Strategy was informed by scientific breakthroughs in the prevention and treatment fields, innovations in law enforcement, and the thoughtful advice of Congress, Federal agencies, state and local partners, civic and professional organizations, and hundreds of concerned citizens around the country. In following President Obama’s charge to seek a broad range of input in the Strategy, I gained a renewed appreciation of how deeply concerned Americans are about drug use. It touches each one of us, whether we know a family member, a friend, or a colleague who suffers from addiction or is in recovery, a police officer working to protect the community, or a parent striving to keep a child drug free.

Of course, as you can immediately see, that “broad range of input” was strictly in the pro-prohibition field.

Drug overdose deaths surpass gunshot deaths in our country, and in 16 states, overdose deaths are a more common cause of accidental death than car crashes.

Of course, that’s only if you include all poisoning deaths of any kind (licit and illicit).

Drugged driving has now been identified at higher
levels than alcohol-impaired driving.

No, it hasn’t. Despite your attempts to make it an issue.

Once again, I’m feeling good about my successful challenge of the drug czar’s use of the NHTSA study to claim that he has data regarding “impaired” or “under the influence” drugged drivers.

Clearly, he intended to use this heavily in the Strategy. Even though his wording had to be carefully restricted, he still manages to use the study improperly to imply that it shows some information about drugged driving.

5. Preventing Drugged Driving Must Become a National Priority on Par with Preventing Drunk Driving

Americans know the terrible consequences of drunk driving and are becoming more aware of the dangers of distracted driving. Drugged driving poses similar threats to public safety because drugs have adverse effects on judgment, reaction time, motor skills, and memory. According to the latest National Roadside Survey conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than 16 percent of weekend nighttime drivers tested positive for drugs. This troubling news demands a response on a level
equivalent to the decade-long, highly successful effort to prevent drunk driving. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has already taken some important steps, including publicizing the survey and adding drugged driving to its public discussions of drunk and impaired driving. However, considering the severe public safety risk posed by drugged driving, much more needs to be done to enhance safety on America’s roads and highways.

The danger of a lunatic like Kerlikowske is not just that he invents problems to fit the solutions he wants to use, but that he actually can create harm if his solutions are followed. Take a look at the heading: “Preventing Drugged Driving Must Become a National Priority on Par with Preventing Drunk Driving.” In reality, that means that we would be giving less relative priority to drunk driving, which is proven to be very dangerous, in order to focus on an area with no statistics demonstrating a significant problem.

The word “driving” appears 41 times in the Strategy.

The biggest problem, of course, with the entire National Drug Control Strategy, is made clear when identifying what guides the strategy at its basic level:

All of these strategies will support the two policy goals specified by Congress in the authorizing legislation of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP): (1) reducing illicit drug consumption, and (2) reducing the consequences of illicit drug use in the United States. These are the Administration’s policy goals because they focus on practical results that are comprehensible and important to the American people.

No, what the American people want is a reduction of harms and reduction of cost to society from drug abuse and the drug war. You don’t address that in any meaningful way by focusing on numbers of “drug consumption.”

As long as the ONDCP operates under its current mandate, any Drug Control Strategy it puts out is going to be irrelevant.

Update:

Mark Kleiman (who generally abhors the excesses of prohibition while believing it can be saved if only we implement better probation policies and adjust marijuana laws) has a clearly different view of the Strategy and takes Isikoff to task.

While Kleiman admits that the strategy contains a lot of objectionable programs and goals, many of which are required by law or politics, he thinks that if we read between the lines, we’ll find gems of improvement. For example:

* “Provide information on effective prevention strategies to law enforcement” seems anodyne until you think about it. Right now, law enforcement is heavily invested in a single, ineffective prevention strategy: DARE, one of the sacred cows of drug abuse control. The implication is that the Feds are going to tell law enforcement agencies with information on programs that actually work.

Really? The strategy itself can’t or won’t tell the truth about programs, studies, or policy. It’s hard to believe that they would provide effective information (which must be fact-based to be effective) to law enforcement.

Is this the strategy that I would have written? Not by a long shot. But is it the best strategy produced since the process started in 1989? Incomparably. It deserved better treatment than Newsweek chose to give it. What it shows is a White House that has gotten over the “drug war” and is ready to think about managing the drug problem.

I disagree. All Kerlikowske has shown is that he’s ready to talk about managing the drug problem as a means to deflecting real concerns about the drug war that the government is unwilling to face, and that he’s willing to pretend that this shift in talk (without true reform) will actually be different in some way that matters.

Jeralyn at TalkLeft points out that the Strategy clearly indicates its opposition to the legalization of marijuana.

Keeping drugs illegal reduces their availability and lessens willingness to use them. That is why this Administration firmly opposes the legalization of marijuana or any other illicit drug.

It’s a point that I missed, in part, because I’ve just gotten used to the fact that the Drug Czar is required by law to oppose legalization in any way.

In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that the failure to secure that border between Arizona and Mexico “has led to violence – the worst I have ever seen.”

He reiterated that Saturday after speaking at the West Valley Military Family Day event in Glendale, saying the concern that drug violence could spill across the border remains intense because Mexico’s political situation is volatile.

“The violence is on the increase,” McCain told The Arizona Republic.

Except that it’s not.

Violence is not up on Arizona border

Assistant Police Chief Roy Bermudez shakes his head and smiles when he hears politicians and pundits declaring that Mexican cartel violence is overrunning his Arizona border town.

“We have not, thank God, witnessed any spillover violence from Mexico,” Bermudez says emphatically. “You can look at the crime stats. I think Nogales, Arizona, is one of the safest places to live in all of America.”

FBI Uniform Crime Reports and statistics provided by police agencies, in fact, show that the crime rates in Nogales, Douglas, Yuma and other Arizona border towns have remained essentially flat for the past decade, even as drug-related violence has spiraled out of control on the other side of the international line. Statewide, rates of violent crime also are down.

Radley Balko has already noted that illegal immigration (while it may have other issues) does not automatically lead to crime, and the article points the numbers out on that as well.

While the nation’s illegal-immigrant population doubled from 1994 to 2004, according to federal records, the violent-crime rate declined 35 percent.

But how about the drug war? Why is there so much violence on the Mexican side and so little on the U.S. side?

It has to do with the nature of the business. It’s on the Mexican side of the border that the control of the business is established. Once drugs are smuggled across the border, there’s little interest in sticking around — they keep on going inland.

Bermudez said people unfamiliar with the border may be confused because Nogales, Sonora, has become notorious for kidnappings, shootouts and beheadings. With 500 Border Patrol agents and countless other law officers swarming the Arizona side, he said, smugglers pass through as quickly and furtively as possible. […]

“It almost seems like Yuma is more of an entryway” for smugglers rather than a combat zone, he said.

Note the rather casual admission that, even with all the border law enforcement, there really isn’t an expectation that smuggling will be stopped or significantly impeded.

Of course, all this doesn’t change the fact that the drug war is causing a lot of violence in Mexico, and that we could dramatically reduce a lot of collateral damage here in the United States as well with legalization and regulation, but this is an interesting side story in political over-reaction.

I was quite pleased to receive the following: Drug War Economic Report – A Compilation of Local Costs of Connecticut’s Current Drug Policies, prepared by the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Robert L. Painter. M.D. Research Assistant, and Susan E. Pease, Dean, School of Arts and Sciences.

Among the participants joining in the consensus were many Yale students and Clifford Thornton (pictured), a longtime legalization spokesperson, who ran as the Green Party gubernatorial candidate on a pro-legalization, anti-drug war platform back in 2006.

This report does a nice job of isolating drug war figures when it’s really difficult to do so effectively, and I think it could serve (as Cliff hopes) as a model for other states.

It’s certainly far more accurate than the kind of figures the other side uses, when they tout their “cost of drug use.”

I also believe, as the report states, that it is a conservative estimate of the cost to local communities in Connecticut of waging this ridiculous war on drugs.

A couple of minor quibbles.

It costs the United States about $60 billion per year in state and federal money to interdict the supply of drugs from outside US borders. The US population is presently 307.7 million, so this represents an expense of $195 per person per year. For its 124,512 Hartford residents, that represents $24,279,233 per year.

I believe the $60 billion (which appears to come from the War on Drugs Clock) represents a slight overlap with some other costs that are being mentioned in this report. But then again, it’s such a loose estimate, that I don’t think that’s particularly significant.

And then, there’s this:

Homicides are a downstream cost that is not easily measured in money terms. In 2008, 35 people were murdered in Hartford. 75-80% of homicides across the country are drug-related. The Hartford Police Department has opined that Hartford’s percentage is much higher. If, however, 75% is the correct figure, 26.25 homicides per year are one of the downstream costs of the drug war in Hartford. According to Corso et al , the average cost per homicide is $1.3 million in lost productivity and $4,906 in medical costs for a total of $1,304,906 per homicide. That is equal to $34,253,783 total cost each year attributable to homicides in Hartford.

Overall, the detailing is fine. I just have a personal issue with using “lost productivity” in these kinds of reports. I know that the other side does it all the time, and so it’s perfectly appropriate for it to be used here. I just don’t like it.

I find lost productivity to be a rather arbitrary and meaningless statistic that is always presented outside of any kind of useful context. Why don’t we come up with a number for the “reduced negative impact on the economy” because the dead person is no longer producing garbage? There are all sorts of variables when determining how a person might have affected the world had they lived.

Sure, lost productivity is a real thing, and it shouldn’t be ignored, but I would prefer to see it as a side-bar, rather than part of the computations. But that’s just me.

Anyway, this is a pretty good report and an excellent model. Check it out.

It’s the last week of classes, and a host of fascinating (and time-consuming) activities. Yesterday was a 16-hour work day.

So what’s going on that interests you? Is it California? Medical Marijuana? The inability of Arizona to come to grips with borders? Russia wanting to go back into Afghanistan to fight the drug war? Renn Fayre at Reed College?

This is an open thread.

That’s right, a third round of voting (three whole sets of suggestions) on naming their pot campaign.

Clearly they have a lot of readers that can be reached through this campaign at FireDogLake. On Monday, they’ll combine the top vote getters from the three sets and vote for the overall winner.

(Of course, there are a lot of pretty ridiculous suggestions cluttering up the list.)

Over at FireDogLake voting is still going on in the second set of names for the contest to name their marijuana legalization campaign.

Jane also notes the new website for an opposition group to legalization in California: Public Safety First. This is a much more dangerous (and well organized) group than the pathetic CALM folks (with their stolen stock images).

As Jane says:

It would more appropriately be called the Prison Industrial Complex Profit Protection Racket, because they are the same outfit who organized against California’s Prop 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2008. The deceptive advertising that brought that measure down was financed to the tune of almost $2 million by the Prison Guard’s union, who were afraid that passage would negatively impact their business.

At Colombia Reports: The biggest loser in the presidential campaign is the war on drugs

The article discusses the problems with the war on drugs in Colombia and Mexico, and then talk about the close race for replacing Uribe as President.

Colombia’s presidential candidates need to have a good, long think about what a post-Uribe drugs policy will look like. […]

So, from Santos to Mockus to Sanin, all would do well to answer the following questions – if elected, how would their government work on purging the judicial system and building the rule of law, so that people arrested for drug trafficking would be successfully prosecuted and successfully contained in prison? How would they better root out corruption in police and intelligence forces? How would they crack down on money laundering and arms trafficking? […]

True, as long as North Americans and Europeans want to put white powder up their noses, the drug war is never going to end. But what can be done, is to reduce the amount of power and control that the cartels exert over Colombian (and Mexican) society. How do Santos, Mockus and company exactly aim to do this? I hope it becomes a more profoundly discussed topic in the next few weeks. [emphasis added]

Well, I’d like to answer that question.

I’m assuming that Colombia has some kind of residency requirement to become a Presidential candidate, so it might be difficult for me to actually throw my Chicago Cubs hat in the ring. But if I could…

On my first day in office, I would announce that the cartels in Colombia were free to grow all the coca they wish, process it, and sell it as cocaine outside the country, as long as they didn’t destroy rainforest for cultivation, use violence or terror against Colombian citizens, or interfere with Colombian government activities.

We would also ignore any violent conflicts over territory as long as the violence was kept away from innocents.

Any cartel that used violence would be fair game for government retaliation, but as long as they played along with the new rules, they’d be able to rake in the black market cash and be free of hassle. I’d also encourage them to spend that foreign money locally to infuse the economy.

Yes, I would be a cartel-enabler.

And then I’d say to the U.S. “OK, the ball’s in your court.”

The United States would get really pissed at me, and threaten sanctions, cuts in foreign aid, etc., but I’d throw it right back at them, and make moving speeches about how Colombia was no longer going to be the cesspool for failed United States drug policy.

I’d make it clear that the United States can’t continue to bury its head in the sand regarding real alternatives to failed policy, while forcing us to draft our citizens into cannon fodder to fuel its war.

I think the citizens might back me.

… and there’s be one real sh*t-storm in Washington that I’d love to see.

Illinois Medical Marijuana law close to a vote

Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), House sponsor of the Illinois medical cannabis bill, has renewed his call for support for SB 1381. He was joined at a press conference by doctors, clergy, patients, and public health authority and Gov. Patrick Quinn’s personal physician Dr. Quentin Young. The legislature is scheduled to adjourn on May 7, so our time is now. We expect Rep. Lang to call for a vote on this bill within a matter of days, quite possibly this Thursday.

We are within striking distance of the 60 votes needed to send the bill to Gov. Quinn for his signature. Gov. Quinn has stated that, “People who are seriously ill deserve access to all medical treatments that will help them fight their illness and recover.” Through his spokesperson, the governor has signaled he will give “serious consideration” to a medical cannabis bill should it reach him.

According to Rep. Lang, “92 [representatives] have looked me in the eye and said, ‘This is a great bill. I hope you pass it.’ But only 52 have said they’ll vote for it. They come up with all kinds of excuses. When you have elected officials who choose to vote against their own conscience for political reasons, that’s a recipe for bad politics.”

A successful House vote would send this bill to Gov. Quinn’s desk.

Help to make Illinois the 15th state to protect patients by once again contacting your Representative to vote “yes” when the time comes.

Call your Representative at 217-782-2000 and tell them to “Vote Yes on Senate Bill 1381.

I agree with what Scott Morgan said about what Eric Sterling said about Michele Leonhart.

Eric’s letter in the Washington Post

The April 19 editorial “Medical marijuana” made a wise observation regarding the D.C. medical marijuana law — “critical details will need to be worked out in its implementation” — but did not mention the key obstacle: the federal drug law and the Drug Enforcement Administration opposition. The D.C. law and those of 14 states are messy because they need to work around federal law. D.C. and the states would benefit from DEA cooperation, not opposition stubbornly grounded on the Constitution’s supremacy clause.

Good news. Court Orders Bail for New Jersey’s John Wilson

The multiple sclerosis patient in New Jersey who was sentenced to five years in prison for growing marijuana plants and has been incarcerated since March may be released today while he appeals his case.

This case painfully reminds me of the case of Jonathan Magbie (although it’s important to remember him).

Want Some Pizza With That Pot? Stoners Weigh in on Legalization’s Big Winners – Daily Finance takes a look at the companies who might gain from marijuana legalization’s “munchie” side-effect.

Now you can download the brochure for Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana and see what they’re pushing to the public.

At FireDogLake, Dale Sky Clare, the Executive Chancellor of Oaksterdam University and the Spokesperson for Control and Tax Cannabis 2010 is interviewed. She talks about both Oaksterdam and the upcoming ballot initiative.

Interesting point she makes is that they now have the support of major labor unions and the NAACP.

Dale speaks very well, and knows all the right points. I hate watching talking head videos, but really enjoyed listening to her. She’s extremely bright, understands the needs of others, and knows how to target her message. I’m really encouraged.

….

This is an open thread.

When the preliminary results of this study came out a while back, it was mentioned here, but now it’s out, it’s official, and it’s an AP story and in the Washington Post:

Study links drug enforcement to more violence

A systematic review published Tuesday of more than 300 international studies dating back 20 years found that when police crack down on drug users and dealers, the result is almost always an increase in violence, say researchers at the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, a nonprofit group based in Britain and Canada.

When communities get tough on drug crime, that drives up the black market profits, prompting fierce battles to control the lucrative trade, their study says. And when powerful and successful drug bosses are taken out, it’s all too common for more brutal and less sophisticated criminals to step in.

“Law enforcement is the biggest single expenditure on drugs, yet has rarely been evaluated. This work indicates an urgent need to shift resources from counterproductive law enforcement to a health-based public health approach,” said Gerry Stimson

Now there is a clear, plain, easy to read and understand, factual imperative for us to re-think using law enforcement in drug policy.

I hope this gets spread in a major way by the AP, because it’s likely to start up some interesting conversations.

Our current drug czar followed his usual pathetic script:

U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, asked about the findings, said the U.S. government is shifting its emphasis toward prevention and treatment of drug abuse, but he said the prohibition on drugs must remain and enforcement must continue.

By that, of course, he means that the budget shows a 6.5% increase in treatment, but also an increase in enforcement, and by the time Congress is done with it, the ratio will be no different than before, and we’ll still have 2/3 of the budget on supply side.

He continued:

“I don’t know of any reason that legalizing something that essentially is bad for you would make it better, from a fiscal standpoint or a public health standpoint or a public safety standpoint,” he said.

Really? Are you deaf? Are you blind? Have you read nothing that drug policy reformers have written? Boy, you really just go around and tell people all the time that you’re stupid. (“not in my vocabulary,” “don’t know of any reasons,” …)

Here are a few for you (and, of course, everything from Twinkies to jogging is essentially bad for you if abused):

• Fiscal: Reduction of billions of dollars in enforcement costs that could be spent elsewhere
• Fiscal: Tax revenues from a legal market
• Public Health: Fewer overdoses with regulated product.
• Public Health: Regulated product also means fewer tainted products and standardized dosage for appropriate drugs, which will save lives and reduce health costs.
• Public Safety: Fewer shoot-outs in the streets
• Public Safety: Fewer people being processed into the criminal system

Former Drug Czar Walters also stepped in.

The former drug czar, John Walters, said the researchers gravely misinterpret drug violence. He said spikes of attacks and killings after law enforcement crackdowns are almost entirely between criminals, and therefore may, in a horrible, paradoxical way, reflect success.

“They’re shooting each other, and the reason they’re doing that is because they’re getting weaker,” he said.

“Yes, I know your daughter was shot to death by a stray bullet in a drug war shootout, but that’s a good thing. It means the bad guys are getting weaker. With any luck, your entire family will be next, and then we’ll know we really have them on the ropes.”

I’m fighting another bout of being ill — this time it’s an intermittent fever for the past three days that’s quite annoying and tiring.

It hasn’t gone much over 101 degrees F, so I don’t think it’s serious, but if it continues much longer, I feel that I probably should see someone — I’m just not sure who.

Should I go to local law enforcement for medical advice? Or the state troopers? Maybe I should check myself in at the regional DEA office? Does anyone know what their clinic hours are and whether you need an appointment?

I mean, sure, I have health insurance and belong to an HMO, but I’m not sure if I should go there since it appears that a doctor’s opinion on medical issues is less valuable than that of law enforcement.