Drug WarRant

Today, the drug czar unveiled the latest ad campaign: MethResources.gov. Certainly better than an alien stealing your girlfriend if you smoke pot, but I can’t help but believe that anti-drug advertising is counterproductive, and not just because it’s been badly/laughably done in the past.

Consider cigarettes. While public perception has changed considerably over the years regarding cigarettes, it seems to me that anti-cigarette advertising had very little to do with it. For most of my friends, this ubiquitous ad actually made them crave a cigarette. (Just as studies showed that the Media Campaign ads against marijuana tended to reinforce marijuana interest.)

The government should really get out of the propaganda business and focus on encouraging scientific inquiry.

Mark Kleiman in Another drug legalization pitch notes:

Esquire publishes yet another drug-leglization screed. Whoever does press relations for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition deserves a bonus.

Perhaps. I’m not going to speak to the salary level of LEAP’s press rep (although I’m happy to support a raise). But what’s interesting is the annoyance with the fact that, once again, legalization is being discussed as a serious policy debate (even though he pretends nonchalance by putting “yawn” in the title).

But Kleiman and his colleagues have not only opposed “legalization” (a somewhat odd thing, since Kleiman himself favors a form of marijuana legalization — the term seems to be more related to his obsessive fear of cocaine legalization and his dislike of “legalizers”), but as a group, they have often steered public policy discussion away from even including the discussion of legalization itself. Most references to legalization are snide comments about legalizers, or throwaway arguments that are completely lacking in evidence.

Now, in the case of the Esquire article, it’s interesting and useful to start having more of a discussion of what prohibition actually costs us in numbers of lives (as opposed to the merely anecdotally horrific). That doesn’t mean that I believe the full numbers in the Esquire article stand up to scientific rigor for accuracy (nor do I believe the author claimed it to be more than an attempt at rough number crunching).

For years, we have heard prohibitionists and their apologists toss out numbers that include things like prison and some pretty made-up “lost productivity” numbers as part of the costs to society of drug use, and few (other than legalizers) have stepped up to correct that (See James Roberts just last week at CATO: “Numerous studies have totaled up some of the costs to taxpayers and consumers from the current problems with drug addiction. These burdens on society — estimated at more than $180 billion a year — affect everyone.”). So a bit of hyperbole on the other side to make a point, while not my preference, seems reasonable.

Kleiman has some legitimate beef with the numbers used. Not all overdose deaths will end with legalization. But his “few hints” to get the reader started in demolishing the Esquire article go nowhere.

1. Alcohol – the drug we decided to legalize and regulate – kills about 100,000 people a year: several times as many as all the illicit drugs combined.

Could be. I don’t know. There are so many different numbers out there regarding alcohol deaths, it’s hard to sort through them. This undoubtably includes fatal car crashes where alcohol was a factor and may or may not have been a contributing factor. But regardless, I’m not sure what significance these rough numbers have to the argument. There’s not going to be 100,000 deaths a year from marijuana if it’s legalized. That’s certain. I can’t think of anyone who would dispute that. So merely legalizing and regulating any particular drug does not mean that it will automatically lead to the same actual lethality as alcohol. The 100,000 number gives us nothing meaningful to use in applying to any other drug.

2. The notion that there’s a set of taxes and regulations that would avoid creating a big illicit market while not increasing drug abuse substantially doesn’t pass the giggle test. (Licit pharmaceutical-grade cocaine costs about a tenth as much as street cocaine. So legalization means either a huge price drop or a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and thus requiring enforcement.

As he’s done before, Kleiman here uses dishonest argument structure to create an unsupported conclusion out of thin air. Re-word that argument into its basic form.

Argument: Legalization means either a huge price drop, or a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and thus requiring enforcement.

Conclusion: Thus, legalization means either a substantial increase in drug abuse, or a big illicit market.

Structure: A means either B or C, therefore A means either D or E. Nonsense.

He’s trying to get you to accept that a huge price drop is the same thing as a substantial increase in drug abuse a priori, and that a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion is the same thing as a big illicit market. Cigarettes have a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and yet the illicit market is negligible compared to the massive world-wide destructive drug prohibition market.

3. Counting all the overdoses as costs of prohibition would make sense – if no one ever died of alcohol poisoning or overdosed on prescdription drugs (often mixed with alcohol).

I agree. However, it’s nice to actually discuss the fact that many overdoses are costs of prohibition, and that ending prohibition could actually reduce the number of overdoses.

4. Yes, street gangs do some drug dealing. But it’s absurd to imagine that the gang killings would disappear if the drug market became legal.

Here Kleiman uses a combination of straw man and the nirvana fallacy. The article never claimed that all gang killings would disappear if the drug market became legal. In fact, they specifically chose to “lowball it” when coming up with the estimated portion that would stop with the end of drug prohibition.

Sometimes I think that the legalizers and the drug warriors have a secret arms control treaty, in which each side renounces the use of factually and logically sound arguments.

What does that mean? Particularly from one who is both a legalizer and a drug warrior, and who uses logically unsound arguments?

I know that Mark Kleiman is convinced that legalization of cocaine will immediately mean that roughly the same number of people using and abusing alcohol now will use and abuse cocaine (with no reduction in alcohol use or abuse) and that therefore we will have armageddon, because nobody can resist the allure of cocaine addiction. And that just isn’t true.

Legalizing cocaine doesn’t mean that it has to be in the alcohol model. There are many options that will make it possible for responsible adults to acquire safe drugs legally without having cocaine keggers and people selling 8-balls in every football stadium. In fact, much like we have dramatically reduced the number of cigarette smokers through education and public attitudes, it’s likely that there will be strong public attitudes directed against public cocaine intoxication. And there are many people who enjoy a drink who will have no interest in ever using cocaine.

Also, legalization is a complex interaction of various options and opportunities. Marijuana legalization will have an affect on the other drugs. Heroin will have its own model, different from cocaine and marijuana. Meth will probably be replaced by a pharmaceutical amphetamine (little blue pills). Most people will continue to use none of them, and many will use drugs but not abuse them. Some will abuse drugs and some will commit crimes, and we’ll be able to focus our limited resources on those last two groups (possibly being even more effective by being able to be swift and certain in our response (but more about that when I shortly review Kleiman’s new book)). The opportunities for rich discussions of public policy will be enormous.

Legalization is on the table. It is a point of discussion. It cannot be ignored or merely pushed off as so politically impractical to negate consideration. Those who would lead policy will have to be willing to have serious discussion about it, or they’ll be left behind.

There are lots of discussions for us to have, arguments to thrash out, policy differences to air, methods to consider, and that should be exciting.

AP article

Nearly a third of all cocaine seized in the United States is laced with a dangerous veterinary medicine — a livestock de-worming drug that might enhance cocaine’s effects but has been blamed in at least three deaths and scores of serious illnesses.

Sound familiar? Remember the rash of deaths from fentanyl-tainted heroin? Similar situation (although it doesn’t appear that levamisole is quite as dangerous as fentanyl).

So, what kind of information do we have to help people, when it’s part of a black market item?

“I would think it would be fair to say the vast majority of doctors in the United States have no idea this is going on,” said Eric Lavonas, assistant director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, where as much as half of the cocaine is believed to contain levamisole. “You can’t diagnose a disease you’ve never heard of.” […]

“It’s hard to know where this contamination (is), in what part of the country it’s located, because there’s really no systematic testing for it,” said Dr. Joel McCullough, health officer for the Spokane area.

In other words, we got nothing. Unless you want to count DEA spokesman Paul Knierim’s glib and unhelpful remark:

“I think the message is the same: Don’t use cocaine, it’s a dangerous drug,” Knierim said.

Would that be his message if his whisky was adulterated with oil of creosote or industrial plasticizer as it might have been during alcohol prohibition?

Throughout the article, when reading the speculation for why cocaine may be cut with levamisole, you realize that every aspect of it is an indictment of prohibition.

The solution is clear, but always unspoken. Legalize and regulate.

Health officials including Lavonas say the public needs to be warned about the dangers.

“It’s not like you can put it on the bottle,” he said.

Sigh.

Mike Gray’s excellent book “Drug Crazy: How We Got Into this Mess and How We Can Get Out” is now available to read online for free at Libertary.com

With an bizarrely titled review of Julie Myerson’s book “The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story,” Dominique Browning descends into the depths of the real Reefer Madness herself.

Browning tells us that the book shows how the author

…was finally forced to throw her eldest son out of the house — and change the locks — when his cannabis habit so deranged him that he became physically violent. He was 17 years old.

Browning also decides to tell us herself, as supposed reviewer of a book, how dangerous this stuff is

Even as stronger varieties are being bred and marketed, medical research is linking cannabis use to behavioral and cognitive changes reminiscent of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and anxiety disorder. And yet we find ourselves arguing about whether pot is addictive or a gateway drug or should be legalized. We are collectively losing our minds. “The Lost Child” is a cry for help and a plea for a clear acknowledgment of the toll this drug is taking on our children.

Reefer Madness, indeed. This is nonsense from a book reviewer who knows nothing about the subject, and who, apparently, also knows nothing about the book.

Fortunately, Maia Szalavitz is on hand to do another outstanding job, this time with a scathing review of the reviewer.

“The Lost Child” purports to tell the story of a mother struggling with her son’s harrowing marijuana addiction; but — and readers of the review aren’t made aware of this – the son has claimed that his mother’s story is false. His revelations have stirred furious debate in Britain and considerable criticism for the author, a noted novelist and journalist, who has been accused of being addicted to using her own family for copy.

As t he antagonist in the story, Myerson’s son, Jake, told the Daily Mail:

“I was just a very confused, unhappy teenager who was too young to know who he was and the cannabis all became tied in with normal teenage rebellion… My mother talks about losing her little boy, but what mother doesn’t lose her baby at some point? It’s called puberty.”

[…]

Surely a review of the book should have at least noted his protest—and perhaps, the fact that he has now changed his name as a result of the book, and that his mother came in for widespread oppobrium in the British media, both from critics and people posting comments on the news articles? And surely this controversy should have raised some element of caution in seeing Jake’s story as a policy prescription for teenage drug addiction?

No kidding.

Take it with a grain of salt — this is one person’s story of reactions in one bar in Tijuana, but I thought it was an interesting take at Narco News on the recent decriminalization law in Mexico.

When I talk with the Fiesta Bar patrons about Mexico’s recent legalization of drugs, they laugh uproariously at either my stupidity or naiveté, reminding me that they have been smoking pot in this bar for generations. They point to the two huffing, overweight policemen who just lugged their fat-asses down those tremendous steps to collect their “hands-off” money. The mordita, the bite, that every bar and restaurant in the central district pays not to have their establishment “set up” with an under-age plant; just like in the strip joints, the hooker bars, the Gay discos, the heroin “shooting gallery” back-rooms of the pool halls. […]

“That law is for you Gringos, not us,” he smiled. “The police have always allowed the decriminalization of drug use, otherwise the jails would be full, the city treasury bankrupt from having to feed them and the courts clogged with meaningless cases.”

The article is more a comment on U.S. policy than Mexican policy.

“Look at your stupid state of California,” he seemed to announce, like a lecture, “no money to pay for services because of the billions of dollars you spend locking young kids up for having a good time.”

“You people are hysterical about drug use, a kind of obsessive paranoia that borders on madness,” he continues, while taking a hit off Miguel’s joint. “I truly feel sorry for your intense jealously that someone else might be enjoying themselves.”

“Porque?” Miguel asks. “Why are the nortenos so afraid?”

Barrett Brown notices that some conservatives (like the Weekly Standard), who have been fans of drug prohibition, have suddenly come to the conclusion that people should own their own bodies.

Since the terrible bloodletting of the Civil War, and now excepting military service, ownership of one’s body is a matter between the individual and God, with no intermediation by government. Yet assertions are now being made that government should have responsibility for, and thus authority over, the maintenance of our bodies … So let’s make up our minds. Does the government, in the last analysis, own your body, or do you?

Conservatives: If ownership of one’s body is so important that you’ll fight against national health care, why won’t you support the ownership of one’s body when it comes to drug policy?

Liberals: If ownership if one’s body is so important that you’ll fight for a woman’s right to choose, why won’t you support the ownership of one’s body when it comes to drug policy?

Study says it’s easier for teens to buy marijuana than beer. No surprise there.

Smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer. That old news again? A good article by Fred Gardner.

It sure is hard to keep up the fiction that marijuana legalizers are nothing but stoners on Pete’s couch that have no motivation.

A Heroin User in Stockholm
An excellent video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union on drug policy in Sweden. Sweden is often allied with the U.S. in its hard-line approach to drug policy. This video exposes how Sweden ignores science and often refuses to help those in need.

I started up with heroin in 1991, and ended up in jail for three years, and so on. When I went to the social services they said: No, we can’t help you. You’re not down the drain enough, you have to do heroin for another four years and then you can come back and then we can help you.

“Just keep grinnin’ – We’re winnin’!”: Prosecutors debate the drug war Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast found an interesting online discussion between Texas prosecutors about the endless drug war.

Tide turns in favour of drug reform by Alex Wodek in the Brisbane Times

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing. Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

Last week, I wrote about the excellent discussion on the war on drugs going on over at Cato Unbound. I’m pleased to see that discussion has recently been picked up by El Paso’s Newspaper Tree.

Remember the Heritage Foundation “economist” that I talked about last time — James Roberts? Well, he returned with a new response called To the Barricades — for Freedom!, which is apparently his way of saying that we must all band together to incarcerate massive segments of our population for participating in consensual activity, so that we can be free… to… band together to incarcerate…

I know, I don’t understand it either. But he thinks it’s important.

…a culture war [has] been raging against western civilization with increasing intensity for decades. In fact, the entire 233-year history of the United States is a testament to the fight against the dark forces that would enslave humanity. Now is not the time to give into them.

He starts out the piece whining that people have been mean to him in this series.

When the ad hominem attacks begin, it is a cue to the reader that the debate opponent is finding himself on the losing end of the argument. I would expect the assaults if they were coming from the left, but it is disappointing to see them coming from an ally on the right.

The “ally on the right” is presumably Ted Galen Carpenter, a VP at Cato Institute. Here Roberts shows something remarkable — that he believes all conservatives are supportive of government imposed morality. Sure, the sado-moralists have grown in power and number on the far right, but there’s still a huge core of conservatives with fiercely libertarian beliefs.

But Roberts can’t believe that anyone with principles would fail to join in his condemnation of some drugs, and his sure sense that a massive criminal bureaucracy (and a massive criminal justice bureaucracy) is the way to deal with them.

I love the way he finds to defend alcohol, while maintaining his zero-tolerance certainty about other drugs.

The drugs differ greatly from alcohol, with which people have had centuries of experience. Indeed, beer and wine were drunk in European towns and elsewhere in the Middle Ages because the water back then gave people dysentery. So over hundreds of years, people built up a tolerance for alcohol and created social institutions that could deal with its consequences. Many even developed DNA resistance to alcoholism. However, the citizens, social organizations, and cultures of Mexico and the United States have no collective behavioral or physiological experience to draw upon in order to deal with the effects that psychotropic drugs will have on society, especially the young, if taken by masses of people on a routine basis.

Moreover, while alcohol can damage one’s health in many ways, it is not likely to lead to lung cancer and emphysema. How will governments condone marijuana smoking while maintaining sanctimonious campaigns of opprobrium against the use of tobacco, which poses a far lesser threat to social order?

Wow. Eat your heart out Fred Astaire. That’s some fancy footwork, there, Jim.

And, of course, nothing he says has a bit of evidence attached to it, such as when he imagines the “newly disabled and diseased drug addicts (and their broken families) that legalization will create.”

Ted Galen Carpenter does a great job of responding with Cracks in the Drug War Fortress

The allegation by James Roberts that he has been the victim of ad hominem attacks is bizarre and unhelpful. Until his latest post, the discussion on Cato Unbound has been both civil and substantive. Since I seem to be the principal target of his complaint, I want to point out that I criticized his use of logic and evidence, not his character.

One persistent, troubling feature of his essays is his tendency to counter arguments that no one has made.

Carpenter’s essay is an excellent rebuttal, worth reading.

Link

Michael Skinner, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, said warning signs of possible drug trafficking include “tortilla packaging, beer cans, Spam, Tuna, Tecate beer cans,” and campers who play Spanish music. He said the warning includes people speaking Spanish.

What’s next, warnings to hike out quickly and call police if you’re in town and discover fried chicken, watermelon and hip-hop music?

I was raised in the church and studied the Bible extensively. So this kind of thing really pisses me off.

Legalization of drugs leaves addicts helpless, priests in Argentina warn

While the priests acknowledged “the good intentions of those who do not want addicts to be criminalized,” they warned that in the case of the most vulnerable people, legalization means “leaving the addict helpless and ignoring his right to help.” […]

They went on to recall that the Gospel invites us to be present at the fringes of society and human existence, “to enter into communion with the poorest of the poor and from there to reach out to all.”

They recall the Gospel, yet seem not to have actually, you know, read it.

Did Jesus say “I’d like to help you, but I need to wait until the Romans arrest you and throw you in jail”?

“…ignoring his right to help.” Really?

Is the catholic church so weak that they cannot help people without first sending them to prison for pot?

Fortunately, there are other religious leaders who understand the true meaning of the Gospels.