Drug WarRant

The drug czar’s “blog” is bragging about the President’s new budget which includes:

an additional $30 million dollars for ONDCP’s award-winning National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and an additional $7.5 million for random student drug testing

… by “award-winning” they must mean “slammed by the GAO for a complete lack of credible evidence of effectiveness.”

This may be the worst mainstream media article in some time.
Rita Rubin vomits a piece in USA TODAY today: CAUTION: Marijuana may not be lesser evil —
‘Gateway drug’ or not, experts say, it’s not a benign path for teens
It’s a big steaming pile of poor journalism, including the standard anecdotal “evidence”

By the time Gardner was a junior, he started skipping high school regularly to smoke pot. “I would always find somebody who wasn’t at school that day and get high with them,” he says. Gardner says he missed 50 days in the first semester of his senior year. His parents discovered his stash of marijuana and sent him to a psychiatrist. His grades plummeted; his college plans evaporated.

or…

Rachel Kinsey says drug addiction runs in her mother’s family, although not in her immediate family. Kinsey, 24, started drinking alcohol at 14 and smoking marijuana at 15 Ö “definitely a predecessor for everything else I used.” She began using Ecstasy and cocaine at 17, then heroin at 18.

But the article headline also promised experts, right?

Adolescents have the greatest rates of marijuana use, and they also have the greatest amount to lose by using marijuana, scientists say.

Ah, good. Scientists. Here we go…

“Adolescence is about risk-taking, experimentation,” says Yasmin Hurd, professor of psychiatry, pharmacology and biological chemistry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who published a rat study last summer that found early exposure to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, led to a greater sensitivity to heroin in adulthood.

Wait a second. Yasmin Hurd? Rat study? Oh, yeah. That would be this nonsense and as it turns out actually appeared to prove that of those rats who were forced to use heroin, those who hadn’t previously been pre-treated with THC were more likely to become heavily addicted to heroin. (At least to the extent that you can draw any relevant conclusions out of a situation involving THC-pre-treated rats who are due to be decapitated.)
And, of course, the thing we know for certain about the gateway theory:

1. Over 99% of those who never try marijuana will not become addicted to heroin.
2. Over 99% of those who do try marijuana will not become addicted to heroin.

Update: Jacob Sullum has a more charitable description of Rita Rubin’s journalism, claiming that she is trying to undermine her paper’s propaganda. I suppose that’s possible, but it looks more to me like a half-assed attempt to show “balance” in a piece that’s clearly written with an anti-marijuana agenda.

Scott Morgan at Stop the Drug War found this bizarre and freakish opinion piece: A new strategy —
Expert: War on drugs should shift focus
The expert? A former DEA agent.
The plan?

In his book “Fight Back — How to Take Your Own Neighborhood Back From the Drug Dealers,” Levine shifts the focus from the drug dealer to the user, who he calls pejoratively the “druggie.” It’s simple business principles at work, he says. Without demand, there would be no need for more supplies brought in.

That’s right. Get rid of the druggies and you win the drug war.
Hmmm… let’s see. According to 2002 NSDUH, roughly 108 million Americans had used illicit drugs in their lifetimes. So if we just arrest them… Now, where to put them….
Levine also wants new drug education approaches in Hollywood and schools:

Levine says druggies should be depicted “convulsing and vomiting on themselves in detoxification wards; or staring vacant eyed on the benches of intake centers and emergency wards. That is what being a druggie is really all about, and that is what we should want our kids to see and understand.”

The entire piece is a bunch of similar nonsense, complete with a rather strange discussion in comments.
…
For a much more intelligent view of the drug war, check out Terry Nelson’s OpEd in the Hood County News last week: Legalize All Drugs, where he makes a very telling point against those who call for winning the war by increasing penalties:

According to the Associated Press

KUWAIT CITY ( AP ) — A court has convicted a member of Kuwait’s ruling family for drug trafficking and the court has condemned him to death, according to a ruling obtained Monday. It is believed to be the first time that a member of a ruling family in one of the Gulf Arab states received the death sentence for a drug offense.

Even facing the death penalty, being wealthy and having connections to royalty, the allure of additional riches derived from drugs is too strong. So, we can conclude from this and our own prison population, that no matter how severe the penalty there will always be those willing to run the risk for the rewards.
We will never stop trafficking in drugs as long as they are illegal, the market is there and the profit so substantial.
The solution is glaringly obvious.
The solution is to legalize all drugs, regulate and control the manufacturing process and license the marketplace. […]

Nelson’s got Levine beat by a mile, in terms of practicality, the truth… and basic intelligence.

That’s a quote from 5th Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, who also talks about “prosecution run amok”… unfortunately in the dissent.
At Grits for Breakfast.

by John Jonik at the Washington Free Press

Here’s this week’s issue.

And don’t miss thehim’s Drug War Roundup at Daily Kos: Driving Under the Influence — He’s got more on the recent “study” in Canada.

2002:

Open Thread — I’ll be busy rooting for the Bears, so you’re on your own.
I bow to the clear superiority of the Colts’ play today (although the first 14 seconds was pretty awesome). I still like Chicago better.

Check out this wonderfully fascinating article by Dean Kuipers in the L.A. City Beat: A Change in the Weather. Go and read the whole thing — it’s worth it.
No big surprises, but a lot of interesting material — most of it has to do with the fact that some of the most sympathetic people to drug policy reform in Congress are now in leadership positions, and the ONDCP is no longer going to get a free ride.
It’s not all great —

Sources close to the appointment, who asked not to be named, say that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic leadership have effectively embargoed major crime or drug policy legislation for the next two years, to avoid looking soft on crime in the 2008 election.

Boy, if that doesn’t describe Democrats… For once, I’d like them to understand that the policy of avoiding looking weak, makes them look… weak.
But Kucinich promises to have some fun.

‹We want to explore the federal government‰s policies and the Department of Justice‰s policies on medical marijuana, for example. We need to also look at the drug laws that have brought about mandatory minimum sentences that have put people in jail for long periods of time. […]
‹No, this committee does not have control of the budgets, but it does have control of the policy, and it can ask questions and get documents that others couldn‰t get.Š

According to Fred Rosen in the Mexico News, despite Calder÷n’s military-style crackdowns and the extradition of drug cartel leaders, things may not be going all that well for him, with an increase in the price of corn, and a decrease in the price of drugs.

Many people are significantly reducing their caloric intake. And many are blaming the government. Within a week of the onset of the corn shortage, Calder÷nÇs approval rating had dropped 20 points to 50 percent.
And now, the results of the drug-war incursions into the states of Michoac½n, Baja California and Guerrero are coming under question. Initially, it was announced that marijuana fields were burned; cocaine, heroin and synthetic drugs were confiscated; major capos were arrested and extradited; professional executioners were killed, arrested or forced to flee the states under siege; and a major dent was put into drug exports and domestic sales. Calder÷n said the operation had brought “peace and certainty” to Mexico.
But the press now reports that no cocaine (the number-one export to the United States) was seized in any of the raids and that many of Michoac½nÇs destroyed marijuana fields, having been planted with a pesticide-resistant strain of cannabis, are making a quick comeback.
And El UniversalÇs always-perceptive columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio reports that aside from the extradition of a half dozen drug barons, the cartels have not taken such a hard hit. “The cost of a joint of marijuana on the streets of Mexico City,” he reports, “is 15 pesos, compared to 25 pesos in December, while Ecstasy tabs, whose producers were also supposedly targets of the crackdowns, have fallen to half of the 50 pesos they cost at the end of the year.”
If the operations had been a success, reasons Riva Palacio, the logic of supply and demand would have produced a reverse effect. The low price suggests there are more drugs on the street than before the anti-drug operations began.

Brian Bennett’s new post: Face It: You’re a “Legalizer” at the anti-drugwar czar blog and Peter Christ’s Why is it easier to sell ‹Drug LegalizationŠ than ‹Medical MarijuanaŠ? at LEAP blog.
Discuss.