Drug WarRant

The latest in drug news – a federal advisory panel has recommended a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, and also reducing the highest allowed dose of acetaminophen, due to excessively high instances of liver damage and fatal overdoses.
My reaction to this news is twofold:

1. Marijuana has never caused liver damage or fatal overdoses. I forget – why aren’t doctors allowed to prescribe it?
2. An outright ban on drugs like Percocet and Vicodin, particularly in the absence of legal alternatives, could cause a lot of people to live in even more pain. Couldn’t we educate people as to the risks, rather than banning?

Worth noting: NORML makes a point about the upcoming legalization debate that should be obvious, but about which reformers will need to be vigilant.

Allowing for the legal, personal cultivation of cannabis provides consumers with the option to grow their own product should commercially available sources offer cannabis that fails to meet the consumers‰ needs because it is excessively expensive, too heavily taxed, or of inferior quality. The mere threat of consumers exercising this option should be sufficient to assure that the legal market for cannabis will be responsive to the needs of consumers, and will not be exploitive.
So when any organization or any state or federal legislator proposes legalizing cannabis, either for medical use or for personal pleasure, but forbids the consumer from growing their own cannabis, those of us who lobby on this issue must insist on amendments to permit personal cultivation.

Update: Alex disagrees.

I don’t care how tightly regulated regulate the market is as long as the controls are primarily civil rather than criminal. I don’t care if you can “grow your own” as long as somebody is allowed to grow it for you, legally, and sell it to you legally, and you are permitted to use it legally, as an adult. […]
Marijuana partisans should recognize this if their goal is to get legislation passed and not simply to spend time thinking about utopian alternatives to the status quo.

Junk science exposed again.
It doesn’t matter how good the scientific research is… it is still junk science if it results in implied conclusions, particularly when they are publicized based on political opportunism rather than waiting to follow through to real proof.
The whole connection of marijuana to schizophrenia and psychosis that has been touted worldwide was clearly in that category – no proof of causality, evidence of self-medication, and lack of certainty regarding diagnosing the onset of the conditions. Yet, all sorts of “serious” people have accepted as certain that marijuana causes schizophrenia and psychosis.
Paul Armentano analyzes the situation:

Most notably perhaps, a team of researchers writing in the July 28, 2007 edition of the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet, boldly proclaimed that smoking cannabis could boost one‰s risk of a psychotic episode by 40 percent or more. […]
Of course, there was a fatal flaw with The Lancet‰s argument Ö one that, oddly enough, every single MSM outlet failed to mention. Empirical data did not support the investigators‰ hypothesis that smoking marijuana was associated with increased rates of schizophrenia or other mental illnesses among the general public Ö a fact that even the authors begrudgingly admitted when they declared, ‹Projected trends for schizophrenia incidence have not paralleled trends in cannabis use over time.Š […]
Two years after The Lancet‰s dire predictions, a team of researchers at the Keele University Medical School have once and for all put the ‘pot-and-mental illness‰ claims to the test. […]

‹[T]he expected rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia and psychoses did not occur over a 10 year period. This study does not therefore support the specific causal link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders. á This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence.Š [Abstract]

Oops.
Just add it to the long list of scary marijuana stories… it’ll turn you into a bat/ax murderer/assassin, it’ll make black men look at a white woman twice, it’ll kill your brain cells, grow man-boobs, make you unmotivated, destroy your memory, cause cancer, make you get pregnant or shoot your best friend, fund terrorists, destroy your sperm, and a whole lot of other things.

Can you imagine such a thing?
Via Tom Angell… The Rhode Island Senate unanimously passed a bill to create a nine-member study commission to ask these and other questions:

• “Whether and to what extent Rhode Island youth have access to marijuana despite current laws prohibiting its use…
• Whether adults’ use of marijuana has decreased since marijuana became illegal in Rhode Island in 1918…
• Whether the current system of marijuana prohibition has created violence in the state of Rhode Island against users or among those who sell marijuana…
• Whether the proceeds from the sales of marijuana are funding organized crime, including drug cartels…
• Whether those who sell marijuana on the criminal market may also sell other drugs, thus increasing the chances that youth will use other illegal substances?”

Of course, we know the answers to those questions, but to see politicians asking them? That’s amazing!
More info here.

It was just the sort of good news the British military in Helmand needed. Soldiers engaged in Operation Panther’s Claw, the huge assault against insurgent strongholds last week, had discovered a record-breaking haul of more than 1.3 tonnes of poppy seeds, destined to become part of the opium crop that generates $400m (£243m) a year for the Taliban. […]
A press release hailed the success of the offensive, and armoured vehicles were hastily laid on to allow the media, including the Guardian, to visit the site where the seizure was made, an abandoned market and petrol station that was still coming under sustained enemy fire when the reporters arrived.

They sure do love to show off when they get a major haul, don’t they? Even though it has very little impact on overall availability.
This particular haul, though, had even less impact on the availability of poppies in Afghanistan.

Major Rupert Whitelegge, the commander of the company in charge of the area, tugged at one of the enormously heavy white sacks.
“They are definitely poppy seeds,” he said emphatically.
Except they weren’t. Analysis of a sample carried out by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation in Kabul for the Guardian has revealed that the soldiers had captured nothing more than a giant pile of mung beans, a staple pulse eaten in curries across Afghanistan.
Embarrassed British officials have now admitted that their triumph has turned sour and have promised to return the legal crop to its rightful owner.

The 1.3 tonnes of beans have a street value of around $1,300.

A contradiction in terms? Normally. But if anyone can accomplish both at the same time, it’s John Walters.
Marijuana Policy Project’s Steve Fox ran into the former drug czar on the subway. Here’s his report.

AP

The Obama administration is developing plans to seek up to 1,500 National Guard volunteers to step up the military’s counter-drug efforts along the Mexican border, senior administration officials said Monday. […]
Senior administration officials said the Guard program will last no longer than a year and would build on an existing counter-drug operation. They said the program, which would largely be federally funded, would draw on National Guard volunteers from the four border states. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been finalized.

Take soldiers trained for war, seek out volunteers out of those who specifically would like to fight a drug war, arm them, and put them on American soil near a potentially volatile border.
Get ready for another Esequiel Hernandez — possibly many.

This is Your War on Drugs is a Mother Jones editorial by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, that makes it appear that some of the things we’ve been talking about are getting traction.

AMONG OUR LEADERS in Washington, who’s been the biggest liar? […] This liar didn’t end-run Congress, or bully it, or have its surreptitious blessing at the time only to face its indignation later. No, this liar was ordered by Congress to lieÖas a prerequisite for holding the job.
Give up? It’s the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a.k.a. the drug czar, who in 1998 was mandated by Congress to oppose legislation that would legalize, decriminalize, or medicalize marijuana, or redirect anti-trafficking funding into treatment. And the drug czar has alsoÖhere’s where the lying comes inÖbeen prohibited from funding research that might give credence to any of the above. […]
But then, the drug war has never been about factsÖabout, dare we say, soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, and counterfactual claims of success.

Not bad. Mother Jones, which has been out on the edge on some progressive issues, has not really been there when it comes to drug policy. And now they are admitting it…

So why don’t we have a rational drug policy? Simple. Forget the Social Security “third rail.” The quickest way to get yourself sidelined in serious policy discussion is to stray from drug war orthodoxy. Even MoJo has skirted the topic for fear of looking like a bunch of hot-tubbing stoners. Such is the power of the culture wars, 50 years on.

I think the biggest progress we’ve made (and most of it, in my opinion, has happened in the past 5 or 6 years) is empowering people (and media) to “stray from drug war orthodoxy.” Mother Jones’ editors are, in this article, way behind, but finally getting the courage.
Even yet, their analytical skills are weak…

What would a fact-based drug policy look like? It would put considerably more money into treatment, the method proven to best reduce use. It would likely leave in place the prohibition on “hard” drugs, but make enforcement fair (no more traffickers rolling on hapless girlfriends to cut a deal. No more Tulias). And it would likely decriminalize but tightly regulate marijuana, which study after study shows is less dangerous or addictive than cigarettes or alcohol, has undeniable medicinal properties, and isn’t a gateway drug to anything harder than Doritos.

I’m not sure how leaving prohibition in place is “fact-based,” or why they’re afraid to use the “L” word for marijuana, but at least it’s more fact-based than today’s policies.
Over at The American Prospect, Eli Sanders has The Last Drug Czar – a fascinating article about Kerlikowske and the drug war in general.
He starts out talking about Kerlikowske’s statement that he’s going to stop using the rhetoric of the war on drugs (whether true or not, even the willingness to use the rhetoric of stopping the rhetoric is, oddly, still significant).

As far as statements from high government officials go, it was a radical declaration. Kerlikowske, and by extension Barack Obama, was rejecting four decades of federal government marching orders — a bold departure that would have been unthinkable in previous administrations. But even more striking than his announcement was the reaction: crickets.

Recognition of the futility of the war and the reality of economic laws…

To the dismay of decades of drug warriors, it turns out that the threat of arrest and, in some cases, harsh mandatory sentences has done nothing to halt the public’s demand for illegal substances. Nor has it lessened the eagerness of street dealers and drug cartels to deliver those illegal substances to markets large and small. Close to half of all Americans report they have tried illegal drugs. Given this kind of persistent demand, it’s no surprise that the targeting of suppliers hasn’t succeeded.

Of course, nobody really thinks Obama’s administration is going to dismantle the war on drugs. At best, there will be rhetoric with no action. At worst, there will be a running away from the discussion. But that opens the door for us… and the states… to take the lead on drug policy. I think that’s why Sanho Tree says “He’s the best drug czar we’ve ever had, which isn’t saying a lot.”
The article goes on to talk to reformers about what we might expect. Nadelmann says that, despite the “giant wave” we’re riding: “I don’t see the drug-war infrastructure crumbling quickly, if only because the old mind-sets have been there for a long time and there are powerful interests vested in the status quo.”
Tree follows up with a hilarious quote:

Sanho Tree, of the Center for Policy Studies, agrees. “It’s very difficult to predict tipping points, and when it happens it’s going to happen quickly,” he says. “We are already at the tipping point societally in terms of ending the drug war. But the people who have to act on this are in Congress, and they won’t do so because they have to face re-election. A lot of these politicians have fairly reptilian brains — you know, fire, burn, bad. … They think that because something was toxic a few years ago, it’s still toxic today.”

In a recent interview with Reuters, U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan:

The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban.
So I need to stress this: the poppy farmer is not our enemy. The Taliban are. And to destroy the crops is not an effective policy and the U.S. has wasted hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on this program, and that is going to end.
We are not going to support crop eradication. We’re going to phase it out and allow for very limited areas, where on a specific, case-by-case basis, it may be valid.

Does that mean that the U.S. has a workable solution? No, not really.

What are we going to do? We’re going to emphasize interdiction, precursor chemicals, and other things — going after drug lords. So we’re not downgrading our effort to fight the dreadful cancer which is the opium trade. But we are going to stop making the farmers the victims.

A real, effective solution that takes drug money away from criminals is outside the current political landscape, but at least maybe they’ll stop the incredibly stupid policy of eradication.

“bullet” A Misguided ‘War on Drugs by Manfred Nowak and Anand Grove in the New York Times.

Anything goes in the ‹war on drugs,Š or so it seems. Governments around the world have used it as an excuse for unchecked human rights abuse and irrational policies based on knee-jerk reactions rather than scientific evidence. This has caused tremendous human suffering. It also undermines drug control efforts. […]
Too many lives are at stake for the current head-in-the-sand politics, and if the United Nations and member states continue to bury their heads, they will be complicit in the abuses.

“bullet” What if the President Smoked Pot? by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic.

The government’s effort to manage tobacco rather than make it illegal is exactly what belongs in the debate over pot and other illegal substances that could, at the very least, provide significant boons to medical pharmacology. The FDA has rejected the possibility of making cigarettes illegal by saying the underground product would be “even more dangerous than those currently marketed.” So when you make popular products illegal, it has the potential to make those products more dangerous. Gee, ya think?
I know that Gee, ya think is about as far as you can get from a comprehensive plan for the controlled legalization of marijuana and other substances. But let’s be adults here. Obama understands the limits of cigarette law because he understands the market for cigarettes. Maybe what the drug debate really needs is a joint in the West Wing.

“bullet” “drcnet”