Drug WarRant

On Sunday at 7:00 pm, Students for Sensible Drug Policy will be hosting a free screening of the medical marijuana documentary “Waiting to Inhale,” followed by a discussion with the filmmaker, a physician, and two patients. Don’t miss this one-day-only screening.
It’ll take place in Schroeder Hall, Room 138, on the Illinois State University campus. (Schroeder is on the corner of College and University. Parking is available in the Bone Student Center lot just to the north.) Email me if you need directions.

Link

The American Psychiatric Association has declared their unanimous vote in support of the legal protection of patients with doctors’ recommendations to use the herb for medical reasons. […]
“As physicians, we cannot abide our patients being subject to arrest and jail for using a physician-recommended treatment that clearly relieves suffering for many who are not helped by conventional treatments,” Dr. Halpern added, as quoted by the Salem News.

Yet more support. Just another bunch of doctors… This is kind of getting tiring, isn’t it? How can the prohibitionists continue to keep a straight face when they refer to it as “so-called” medical marijuana?

“bullet” The ACLU has a new website (thanks to Grits for Breakfast for the info) on informants: Unnecessary Evil: Blind Trust and Unchecked Abuse in America’s Informant System
It’s a fascinating site, with horror stories, legal resources, and some excellent recommendations for policy changes. They also have a new blog with some interesting items.
Check it out.
“bullet” John Walters is off bragging about his “successes” in the cocaine drug war, but the Associated Press doesn’t give him a free pass anymore: US drug czar touts cocaine shortage, despite conflicting supply data

This year’s apparent shortage could prove to be just as short-lived, the 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment found.
Even while acknowledging previously announced shortages during the first half of the year, the report prepared by the Justice Department’s drug intelligence center found “cocaine availability may already be returning to previous levels in some areas.”
The report did not say which markets were being replenished or how quickly, only that the shortage observed between January and June “was not the result of decrease in cocaine production.”

Oops. Did they just call Walters a liar?

More likely, it was the result of a crackdown on prominent Mexican traffickers, violent feuding among that country’s cartels and surging demand for cocaine in Europe. […]
“Nobody believes there’s not enough drugs in the system to satisfy global demand,” Jess Ford, author of the GAO study partly based on the most recent government data, told The Associated Press.

“bullet” Oh yes, and I almost forgot…
Swiss Study Finds Marijuana Use Alone May Benefit Some Teens This is interesting, but keep in mind that, from my limited reading of it, the headline is improperly worded. I’m guessing that the study found not a causal affect, but rather a relationship between moderate marijuana use and well-adjusted teens. (In other words, it may be that well-adjusted teens tend to seek out a mild social rebellion, or that moderate use of marijuana goes hand-in-hand with certain positive social activities, etc. — not necessarily that marijuana use caused benefits (although that’s also possible)). What this, of course, does show is that the whole “loser” epithet pushed by the drug czar, is nonsense.

Yesterday, Denver was voting on an initiative to legalize marijuana [already done previously] make marijuana arrests the lowest priority in the city.
Apparently there were some problems getting all the ballots counted, it turns out that the city called in SWAT last night to help.
As Jeralyn said last night:

If the vote changes by morning, I want a recount.

Even though Rocky Mountain News is still not officially calling it, with the vote count:

the national media is saying the marijuana initiative has passed.

The measure, which passed Tuesday with 54% of the vote, says adults 21 and older may possess up to an ounce of marijuana without penalty in the city.

However, don’t plan your trip to Denver just yet:

Mayor John Hickenlooper said police will continue to arrest and charge people for marijuana because state law still makes possession illegal.

Hmm… maybe the next initiative in Denver will be to secede?

That’s a question I have for prohibitionists.
What got me going on this is the ending of the national anthem…

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave…

If we’re the home of the brave and the land of the free, then why are we so afraid of freedom?
It sure seems like it. Why else would we go out of our way to eliminate it?
Or is it that we’re afraid of pot smokers? Maybe the thought of some guy sitting on his couch smoking a joint is just so incredibly terrifying that people chop up the fourth amendment, force people to pee in cups, and lock up huge portions of the population — all because they’re afraid that this pot smoker might… inhale.
No, we must be afraid of freedom. Sad, really. We’re supposed to be this beacon of freedom…

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

And yet, when it comes to the drug war, we fear freedom. So we authorize drug dog searches of cars, routine pat-downs of pedestrians, no-knock violent searches of homes; we restrict what people may say, what paraphernalia they may own, what crops they may grow, and what they may put into their own bodies.
Aren’t we supposed to export freedom to the world? Make the rest of the world see us and want freedom, too? How’s that going to work when it’s so obvious that we fear freedom?
We have 5% of the world’s population, yet 25% of the worlds prison population. We make drug war exceptions to the Bill of Rights without any evidence that the exceptions are needed or provide any value.
I imagine a father in some foreign land explaining to his son. “You see, Americans claim that freedom is good, but it obviously doesn’t work. They lock everyone up and they still have to keep repealing portions of it. You’re better off without such a useless thing.”
So these days when the national anthem asks the question:

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

… while others respond with the traditional “Play Ball,” I, instead, answer sadly: “No.”
Why are prohibitionists afraid of freedom?

Why am i afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love? Why must I pretend to scorn in order to pity? Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand? Why must I be so ashamed of my strength, so proud of my weakness? Why must I live in a cage like a criminal, defying and hating, I who love peace and friendship? Why was I born without a skin, oh God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?

– from the play “Great God Brown” by Eugene O’Neill

Via Vice Squad, I learn that Foreign Policy magazine has published some letters in the November/December issue, responding to Ethan Nadelmann’s cover article here with the rest requiring subscription or day pass to access) are a rather bizarre mixed bag.
It starts with a really ignorant letter from Paul Rexton Kan (Assistant Professor of National Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College), including this nonsense:

Imagine a world where all drugs were legal. Vials of cocaine would be produced by multinational corporations and sold alongside packets of cigarettes and
bottles of alcohol at local stores. Instead of needle-exchange programs, coupons for free needles would be distributed in periodicals, perhaps even in Foreign Policy. The needles themselves would be made available near vending machines that dispense a drug, say methamphetamine, just as matches are sold near some tobacco machines. Does Nadelmann not consider that an alarming prospect?

This idiot supposedly has a doctoral degree. (Of course, I can’t guarantee that he’s really an idiot — he may simply be a propagandist who thinks that the readers of Foreign Policy are all idiots. I’m guessing it’s probably a combination.)
First… tobacco machines? What century is this guy from? I’m old enough to remember the days of cigarette machines in laundromats and grocery stores, but those days ended in most of the country once federal laws required states to find ways to guarantee that they weren’t selling cigarettes to minors. Now, the machines are mostly relegated to locations that already restrict age. In other words, cigarettes are legal, but regulated.
In any legalization scheme, there will be some regulation. Some drugs may be regulated more tightly than others. It’s ridiculous to assume that meth would be sold in vending machine, and it’s dishonest for Kan to discount consideration of legalization by positing some fanciful version of legalization that would never happen in the real world.
This trash is followed by a fascinating, yet frustrating letter by Robert MacCoun (Professor of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley) and Peter Reuter (Professor of Public Policy at University of Maryland).
Check this out:

As we argued in Drug War Heresies (Cambridge University Press, 2001), there is little doubt that legalizing cocaine and heroin would reduce many of the harms that most concern us now. Crime would fall dramatically, the drug-market disorder that is the bane of so many inner-city communities would disappear, and, with careful planning, the connection between HIV and injecting drugs could be broken.

Sounds like a resounding vote for legalization, rather than a critique, but then it gets… a little surreal…

Even if heroin use increased by 50 percent, society would probably be better off without the ill effects of prohibition. But if it increased by 500 percent (still well below the levels of alcohol or tobacco dependence), society would probably be worse off. […]
Legalization might be a good policy option. But its advocates must accept the uncertainty of predicting any potential consequences and acknowledge the transformationÖrather than complete eliminationÖof the drug problem that would remain.

What the hell is that about? What does it mean?
That’s the frustrating part. First, notice the offensive straw man. Who has said that legalization would result in the complete elimination of drug problems? Why is this position being assigned to drug policy reformers? There isn’t a shred of evidence for it. Of course, there is some uncertainty involved in legalization — nobody disputes that. Where there is absolutely no uncertainty is in the fact that prohibition is an abject disaster. Is this some kind of academic obsession with providing some kind of hypothetical “balance” — even in cases where none exists in fact?
And one more point — It seems to be a popular trick, among academics in particular, to make the completely unfounded suggestion that, if legalized, cocaine or heroin use would somehow automatically rise to the “levels of alcohol and tobacco dependence” (and apparently without any reduction in those). Logically, this makes no sense at all. Substitution is a much more likely scenario than doubling up. And different drugs will have wildly different usage patterns. There are an awful lot of people who like to drink beer who won’t want to shoot up heroin.
This should be patently obvious just by looking at legal drugs. There’s a whole lot more beer consumption than that of whiskey (or all spirits combined). Even if you look at only the portion that’s pure alcohol, beer consumption still outnumbers spirits by 2-1. And cigar and pipe smokers are vastly outnumbered by cigarette smokers.
My guess is that there would be a relatively large increase in marijuana use, a small increase in cocaine and heroin use, a possible decrease in cocaine and heroin abuse, a small decrease in alcohol use, a flattening of tobacco, and a dramatic reduction in meth use. But that’s just a wild guess — so much depends on the methods and timetables of legalization, and the degrees of regulation.
But guess what? We don’t know. Nobody knows. Legalizers have made the case, clearly and specifically, that an alternative to prohibition is not just a value, but a necessity. Nobody has made a clear and specific case as to why continuing prohibition makes sense (and vague, unsupported, and illogical “what ifs” can’t cut it).
Look, I really appreciate the work of MacCoun and Reuter (I own their book and find it an interesting and useful academic exercise, although in terms of prediction it’s little more than wild guessing), but it seems to me that there’s some bizarre academic urge to wait for a magical definitive study as to what post-prohibition specifically will bring before fully committing to ending prohibition — and that attitude does real harm. This isn’t Schrûdinger’s Cat — we can’t sit around having theoretical discussions about the state of the unseen cat. We are dying and society is being damaged more each day this drug war continues.
We’re not going to know specifically what legalization will bring until we actually try it. Somewhere. Somehow. And people need to realize that and have that fact inform the conversation.
The final letter in Foreign Policy is from Mathea Falco, President of Drug Strategies. She attempts to use misdirection by pretending that the question is how to cut drug consumption, and then claims her public health approach will do that better than legalization. That’s just standard drug warrior technique of re-writing the question that I’ve talked about before.
Update: I think I should clarify one of my thoughts. “We’re not going to know specifically what legalization will bring until we actually try it. ” There’s no doubt that legalization has been tried in a number of watered down forms in the modern day, or fully in the past, and that every such instance has failed to confirm the speculative fears of those who hesitate to give full throated support to legalization. And yet, they’ll say, that was a different time and place — there’s no way to prove that legalization would be as benign here and now.
And that’s true. We can’t prove it. But the evidence supporting legalization far outweighs any supposed evidence supporting prohibition. Period. And that’s all that matters.
Paul is beating John in the head with a baseball bat. “Stop it!” John cries. Paul responds: “No. I don’t dare. Who knows what might happen. Your left foot might fall off.” “What?!?” cries John, “… do you have any evidence that that’s likely to happen?” Paul: “Hey, I can’t take that chance. Until I have proof that you won’t lose your left foot, I’m going to have to keep beating you in the head… Sorry.”

I really enjoyed spending a little time with a couple of Drug WarRant readers this weekend in Chicago.
I’m hoping to be able to spend time with more of you in December at the 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. (As a major fan of food spending time in a place like New Orleans, I’ll be particularly interested in doing some restaurant exploration.)
I’ll be presenting a workshop on “Elevator Arguments” with David Guard on Friday, December 7 at 4:30 pm.
I’ve also got three students from the local chapter of SSDP attending, with some generous scholarship assistance.
A financial note: It’ll cost me about $900 to go to the conference (registration, hotel and transportation — not counting food!) even as a speaker. (I don’t mind, and I love the fact that so much effort has been made to make it affordable for students.)
The Google ads on this site have been doing quite well (about $100 per month) and completely cover my direct internet and blogging expenses, but they won’t begin to touch this expense. So if anyone’s looking for an excuse to make a contribution here, this would be a good reason. But only if you have extra — this won’t send me to the poor house or anything.

Lots of important stuff to catch up with…
“bullet” It’s great having thehim back in action. Check out this fantastic visual guide to the U.S. drug war in Mexico.
“bullet” This is truly sick.
“bullet” Transform has a post up about a Lord’s debate in the UK, where members not only ripped into the government’s status quo drug policy, but debated prohibition itself.
Lord Mancroft:

In other words, government policy has created a free-for-all in drugs, where only criminals benefit and the whole communityÖyoung people in particularÖsuffers as a consequence. Nothing in the current proposals leads one to conclude that this Government either understand this or have the courage to address it.”

Lord Errol:

“I want to start with the old saying that laws seldom prevent what they seek to forbid. The real problem is the politicians’ public posturing to try to get headlines that they are being tough on things, without thinking of the effect. That means that changes can be very tricky, because I can imagine the newspaper headlines screaming out the moment someone wants to take one of the more sensible approaches that have been recommended by several noble Lords

“bullet” Random drug testing does little to deter student athletes from using drugs. This, according to a federally funded $3.6 million study.
“bullet” Hypocritical Governments Ignore Alcohol’s Dangers — Dan Gardner is always an enjoyable read

I once attended a dinner in Ottawa that brought together RCMP officers, DEA agents, politicians and civil servants in honour of a visit by the United Nations’ top anti-drug official. There was an open bar. And so, as speakers denounced the evils of drugs and vowed to continue the fight for “a drug-free world” — an official goal of the UN — most of the people nodding their heads and applauding vigorously were buzzed on a drug that has killed far more people than all the illicit drugs combined.
Bizarre juxtapositions like this abound, but they don’t come any stranger than a government spending large sums of money suppressing drug use while a corporation owned by that same government spends large sums of money encouraging drug use.
That happens every day in Canada. And no one sees anything amiss.

“bullet” Fund drug treatment rather than Mexican anti-drugs operations by Ethan Nadelmann

Leaders in both countries would do well to provoke a discussion about the failures of drug prohibition and the damage it is causing. […]
Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.”
Until policymakers start rethinking failed drug-war policies, the violence and corruption inherent in prohibition will continue.

“bullet” NDSU Files Amicus in Support of Hemp Farming Lawsuit, DEA Makes Feeble Argument that Hemp Can be Turned into Drugs. That’s right, North Dakota State University — a government entity — has filed a brief opposing the DEA. I wish I could hear the oral arguments on November 14 in this case. Should be fun.
“bullet” Why not pump up the idea of legalizing marijuana? by Debra J. Saunders. Saunders takes on the known-for-toking Governor, and elicits some interesting observations:

“Ask any cop if they’d rather arrest somebody who is drunk or somebody who is stoned,” Mirken had asked rhetorically.
For Delagnes, the answer was easy. Tell someone who’s stoned to put his hands against the wall, “he’ll probably say, ‘That’s cool.’ “

“bullet” Keeping us safe by taking cocaine off the streets… one .001 gram at a time. Arresting this lawyer? What an over-reaction!
“bullet” “drcnet”

Jamie over at Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer:

Just a week or so ago, I was having a conversation with a fellow Austin criminal defense attorney about whether ëdecriminalization/legalization‰ would reduce or increase crime.
Like me, he is strongly against our current Drug War policies, especially when it comes to imprisoning and using felony enhancement provisions in the Penal Code for drug possession cases — creating ridiculously long sentences, sometimes 25 years to life.
However, he argued that even heavily regulated but legal use of cocaine and heroin would automatically increase drug use itself, and also other crimes š mostly property crimes.

This is a common logical disconnect that happens in drug war discussions. There are two major problems with the reasoning of Jamie’s friend in answering the question “would there be more or less crime if drugs were legalized:

1. He asserts that legalization would provide an increase in use and therefore an increase in use-related crime, such as property crimes. Certainly, there are crimes that happen that are related to drug use and getting money to buy drugs. And, all other factors remaining the same, it is not a logical stretch to assume that an increase in drug use would result in an increase of that kind of crime.

   However, the point is that all factors will not remain the same.

   • In a regulated environment, it’s possible that drugs will be more affordable, reducing the “need” for property crimes.
   • Drug users will not have to interact with a criminal network in order to procure drugs (breaking the law to buy drugs may make it easier to break the law in other ways)
   • Drug users will be less likely to have spent time in “criminal training school” (jail)
   • Law enforcement, no longer focused on drug arrests, may be more able to focus on property crimes, thereby reducing them.

   So, in fact, it is not nearly as certain as might appear at first glance, that increased use would result in an increase in use-related crime. And it may well be that it would be reduced.

2. The question was whether crime would increase or decrease, but Jamie’s friend has chosen to only discuss whether drug use-related crime would increase or decrease. In fact, drug use-related crime is miniscule (and generally less dangerous) compared to drug prohibition-related crime. Legalization would obviously result in a dramatic reduction in prohibition-related crime, since there would no longer be… prohibition.

   No more

   • Shootouts over drug territory
   • Violent “contract” disputes
   • Drug prohibition-related corruption of law enforcement

   Additionally, ending prohibition would have all sorts of potential other side effects that could reduce overall crime, including keeping families together, putting drug income/profits into the legal market (increasing legitimate jobs and the legal economy), etc.

Of course, even limited experiments have shown the truth of this…

Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist, Martin Kilias, found that the users’ involvement in burglary, mugging and robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same strategy. All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier ( because clean heroin properly used is a benign drug ) and that they are more stable with clear improvements in housing, employment and relationships. [The Guardian]

Unfortunately, the United States has done everything in its power to block such experiments with legal, regulated drugs.

It’s very hard to know for certain every aspect of the consequences of legalization. There are too many factors, and there are too few modern experiments that truly qualify. But the first step is to answer the right question. Then it’s not so hard to draw some very strong logical evidence that a proper legalization scheme could result in a dramatic reduction in crime.
Now in the case of Jamie’s friend, I think that answering the wrong question was probably a natural, inadvertent act. Others, however, make a living at answering the wrong question. This behavior is particularly common at the ONDCP.
Check out this one by David Murray:

Some have argued that keeping marijuana illegal itself does damage, since people run the risk of arrest if they break the law. But this purported damage is much overstated.

See what he did? Forget the point about the damage being overstated (which it isn’t). The bigger issue is that he re-defined our question by answering the wrong one. We argue that keeping marijuana illegal itself does damage for a whole bunch of reasons (including feeding the black market, damaging the environment, denying financial aid, turning the law enforcement-citizen relationship into one of enemies, and on and on…). But in his answer, he limits the question so as to only cover the damage of arrest.
So when talking to people about drug policy, watch for this little trick, and make them answer the right question.

Your choice:

Why is Marijuana Illegal?

Why is Marijuana Illegal?