Drug WarRant

Sure, the writing may not reach the level of a Bill Steigerwald or Maia Szalavitz , but it gives me a warm glow to see this OpEd in the Illinois State University Daily Vidette.

Just because marijuana is illegal, that does not mean that it is immoral. Slavery was legal, yet immoral. Many other contradictory cases exist. It is easy to believe that one should not do something because the law prohibits it; but sometimes that is not enough. […]
Therefore, just because it is illegal, that should not necessarily stop a person from participating or at least having the choice to participate. It does not make sense to me as to why marijuana is illegal.
For one, the government would be able to rake in huge amounts of money if they regulated and charged taxes for the so-called drug.
Additionally, the government regulation would make a much safer environment for those who do choose to smoke marijuana. […]
If you are against smoking marijuana, that is your right, but I hope you are then also against alcohol. Tens of thousands of people die each year in alcohol related instances.
According to drugwarfacts.org, “An exhaustive search of the literature finds no credible reports of deaths induced by marijuana…. Marijuana alone has not been shown to cause an overdose death.”
If you are against marijuana due to legality issues, I hope you never drank alcohol under the age of 21. […]
One of the best arguments I have heard against smoking marijuana is that since it is illegal, instead of sitting in a room smoking, why don’t people go out and do something to make it legal? This is a great argument and there are groups on campus to join such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
Whatever you believe or choose, be safe and remember, it is still illegal just like alcohol was during prohibition.

Nice job, Jes.
And a nice plug for SSDP.
Don’t forget, the SSDP conference is this weekend in College Park, MD. I’ll be there. So will Radley Balko, and Mayor Cheye Calvo. And folks from LEAP and DPA, and NORML, and ACLU, and the U.S. Congress.
If you’re there, or in the area and stop by, please introduce yourself to me. I’m pretty easy to spot — the big guy with red hair and a beard.

Not really, but…
I’m busy clearing up some work and getting ready to go to the SSDP conference on Friday, so I’m taking advantage of the fact that Scott tends to say what I think anyway.

1. Eric Holder. There’s already been some discussion about Obama’s likely Attorney General pick in comments and elsewhere. I agree with Scott’s analysis. Sure, there are seriously troubling things in his past statements, but who in political mainstream wouldn’t have said things in the past that we wouldn’t like, depending on the context. There are also positives. He appears to be smart and have a more appropriate view of the role of justice in this country than we’ve seen for a while.
   So, like Scott, I reserve judgement.
2. Marijuana Might be Good for Your Memory. A new study has found that… whoa, man. What was I just talking about?
   Oh, right. Long term memory. Whole different thing.

When the drug czar claimed that there were more medical marijuana outlets in San Francisco than Starbucks locations (and who cares?), there was a bit of a blowback because the numbers they used made no sense at all.
Well, the media picked it up, ridiculed it, forced the drug czar to change the numbers on its blog… and even Starbucks stepped in to correct them.
So now the Drug Czar has a new post claiming that, while the Starbucks comparison may be weak, at least there are more medical marijuana outlets than there are Taco Bells.
Can that office get any more ridiculous or irrelevant?
I guess they’re trying to get all the medical marijuana providers to move into one box store so the DEA can bust it easier. After all, there are a limited number of days for this administration to clear out all the state-authorized medical providers and stop them from providing relief to sick people.
Hmm… with the Taco Bell reference, maybe Walters is looking for a job as a burrito taster.

Update: Should have known to read Scott Morgan first. He’s on it.

Let’s take a break from speculating on the next drug czar, and take a moment to speculate on this one.
Sometime in the next 62 days, John Walters is going to resign as Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
So let’s hear your guesses about his future. The winner gets a mug or something (maybe a job as a burrito taster).
1. Walters undoubtedly has his next job already lined up. It could be in a drug testing firm (he’s certainly been selling his soul to promote drug testing and is due some major payback from that industry). It could also be in a company that needs government and international contacts (and while Walters is an idiot, he’s spent years dealing with foreign governments and Presidential-level leaders — former DEA head Karen Tandy got a job with Motorola to take advantage of her foreign contacts).
Name the company that hires him (or at least the field).
2. Speaking of student drug testing and all the people who profit from it, here’s an interesting little organization – the Student Drug Testing Coalition. Check out the list at the bottom of that page — names like Barthwell, DuPont, Nalepka, and more.
When will Walters’ name show up on that list?
3. Walters’ mentor, William Bennett, has made a career of appearing on political gossip TV shows (of course Bennett had more careers than just drug policy). Walters has generally avoided appearances where he might get tough questions.
After he resigns, will he show up on the talk-show circuit or not?
4. During tough economic times, if someone publicly screws up every aspect of their job for years and then resigns, generally you might think that they’d have a hard time finding employment. With all his failures, will Walters be forced to go on unemployment or to ask people if they want fries with their meal?

Eric Sterling:

Before the nation’s governors, mayors and county executives propose furloughing or laying off police officers, school teachers, sanitation workers, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and recreation aides who care for our family members and protect public safety, there is one question that the public employee unions should demand answered: How much revenue from marijuana taxation are they throwing away in order to sacrifice those jobs and the families of public employees?

Road trip!
The national international SSDP conference is happening this weekend in College Park, Maryland. And while I hadn’t originally planned on making it, I’ve been asked to do my Elevator Arguments workshop again and to facilitate a luncheon discussion on education.
It looks like quite a line-up – here’s the schedule. Some really outstanding speakers and workshops.
It’s a particularly great opportunity for students. I’m thrilled that we’ve got 5 students from Illinois State University going (and there will be a couple alums of that group going as well). It’s important for students — great training and motivation, and SSDP does an incredible job of helping students out with scholarships to cover conference fees, lodging, travel, etc.

Which leads me to a small bleg. The emphasis is helping students, so a workshop leader like me pays full conference fees and lodging, etc. In any other conference, that would be backwards, but in this one, it makes sense. It was, however, an unplanned expense for me. And I’m driving some of the students 1600 miles round trip to the conference instead of flying in order to save the group some money.
So, if anyone would like to help out, I’ve set up a Pay Page for contributing to this little road trip.
Don’t contribute unless you have extra lying around. I’m serious. I can handle it and I won’t go broke. But if you’d like to vicariously go on a road trip with me, feel free to drop some change in.

There has been an incredible chorus of whining from law enforcement personnel since the initiatives in Michigan and Massachusetts passed. It reeks of desperation and, quite frankly, incompetence.
Here’s just one more:

East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said he worries people will abuse the constitutional amendment, which he said is unfortunate because the proposal was intended to play on people’s compassion for those in serious pain.
“There’s a lot of potential for abuse,” he said. “Another interesting part is who would hold a doctor responsible for the prescription he writes? What would prevent a doctor from handing out prescriptions to anybody who asks?”
Wibert, who said he was surprised the proposal passed, said he would have to train police officers on the system of documentation for people who can legally use marijuana.
“It strikes me that it should be somewhat confusing,” he said. “What type of documentation are people going to have? How would a police officer know whether it’s valid documentation?”

This is so hard! Somebody is going to have to come up with some kind of… system or something. We don’t know how to do that. Why are they making our jobs so difficult? Have you ever heard of law enforcement working with, like, documentation of some kind? It would be as if people who drive cars had to have some kind of pass or card or something.
Whine.
And gee, what if a doctor prescribed it to someone who wasn’t supposed to get it? Well, you know what? Doctors prescribe medicine every day. And they’re licensed. And of all the drugs to worry about, what’s the worst that could happen from prescribing marijuana to someone who needs it? The munchies?
I heard that the crime rate in East Lansing was down, but apparently it is so low that Chief Wilbert’s biggest concern is some people (many of whom are seriously ill) experiencing… mild euphoria.
And so he’s whining about it.
Pathetic.

Keep in mind that I really think this is really too early to be picking drug czars, but people can’t help speculating. The latest comes from Ryan Grim at the Politico.

Rep. Jim Ramstad’s name is bouncing around as a possible “drug czar” — the name given the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Ramstad, a Minnesota Republican, is in recovery himself and has been a longtime proponent of treatment for drug abuse.
Along with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he has been an advocate for mental health parity — the push to treat mental illness with the same effort as physical illness. Ramstad has consistently voted against medical marijuana in Congress, opposing an effort to prevent the federal government from raiding or arresting medical marijuana clubs in states where it is legal.

While certainly it could be a positive step to focus on treatment more than enforcement, as Radley says:

Fear the ex-addict who enters the public policy debate to ‹prevent others from making my mistakes.Š

“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
Lots of great stuff in this week’s edition of DrugSense Weekly. Also, a big congrats to Allan Erickson for being named MAP’s Letter Writer of the Month for October.
Also a pretty interesting issue of the Drug War Chronicle (below). The feature: Looking Forward — Who Should Be the Next Drug Czar?
“bullet” “drcnet”

Well, the delightful new ONDCP Burrito Taster / Couch Security Guard / TV Remote Control Operator ads I talked about have been ridiculed far and wide. Criminal justice and drug policy blogs around the country and overseas have laughed their heads off and it’s reached into mainstream political blogs as well.
It’s pretty much unanimous that these are unlikely to have any impact other than providing free decoration for dorm rooms.
I took some copies to a hempfest in a neighboring state and everyone wanted one. The owner of a head shop there took one of each to put on the wall and said “this looks like what we’d come up with.”
The only actual supposedly anti-drug message on the ads — “Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.” — generated even more ridicule, with sites all over the web generating lists of people in the top jobs in the world who smoked pot (video and list).
So…
To give you an idea of the degree of delusional thinking emanating from the folks at the White House Office of National Drug Policy, check out this pat on the back they give themselves…

Here’s another print ad from the campaign that follows up on the much talked about “Burrito Taster” ad we posted on the blog last week. [emphasis added]

Yeah, it’s much talked about in the same way that the guy who stepped on a rake and hit himself in the balls on America’s Funniest Home Videos is much talked about.
Now, I figure they probably are thinking that the idea is to create a “culturally cool” ad that will attract the interest of stoners while giving them a subtle message that will reach them even as they enjoy the humor of the ad.
The problem with that is that they have no message. There is nothing they can say in an ad to convince people to not use marijuana because people aren’t that stupid. They already know the actual risks and benefits of using pot and will make their own decision. There is no big downside (other than the legal status) and they know it.
So it doesn’t matter what the ONDCP does in terms of advertising. The have no message. All that can actually happen with any ad they come up with is to bring up the subject of marijuana.
Because the ONDCP can’t outlaw reality, the taxpayers are, in fact, paying millions of dollars to remind people to smoke pot.