Drug WarRant

I know others have addressed this, but I have to at least mention it.
On June 28, there was an excellent, thoughtful, and intelligent letter in the Denver Post called One Soccer Mom’s Take on the Drug War.
Well, naturally, DEA head Karen Tandy felt the need to respond with Another Soccer Mom’s Take on the Drug War. And it is a vile piece of attempted deception.

Marijuana is against the law because it’s a dangerous, addictive drug.
This is a health issue. According to the American Lung Association, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more cancer-causing material than cigarette smoke.

Feel free to read the rest of the letter. It’s all ridiculous (and others have debunked it point by point). But let’s take a moment to focus on this section.
This is a lie. Period.
Karen Tandy knows full well that the studies have shown marijuana does not cause cancer. It doesn’t matter if that was a true attribution to the American Lung Association or not. The only purpose for writing that was to imply that marijuana causes cancer — something Karen Tandy knows not to be true.
That makes it a lie, and a despicable one. This is a public official, paid by our tax dollars, lying to the American people about cancer. This should be, at the very least, a fireable offense.
Don’t let the fact that they do it all the time blunt your outrage.

Could it be that American business is starting to come to their senses and reject the government’s propaganda (and the lies of the drug testing industry)? Reynolds Holding at Time.com seems to think so. Check out his article: Whatever Happened to Drug Testing?

The percentage of businesses that force their employees to pee in a cup is dropping — largely because it never made much sense in the first place […]
Despite the growing demand for drug tests in sports and other fields, the percentage of employers with testing programs has dropped steadily since 1996, from 81% to 62% in 2004, according to the American Management Association, which sees the trend continuing. […]
Pragmatists contend that the drop-off is mostly a matter of cost. Although individual drug tests seem cheap — $25 to $50 each, according to Quest — the total expense gets difficult to justify when so few tests come up positive. According to a 1999 ACLU study, the federal government spent $11.7 million to find 153 drug users among almost 29,000 employees tested in 1990, a cost of $77,000 per positive test. Many industries, particularly construction, transportation, health care and retail, also face labor shortages, and the fierce competition for workers may compel employers to forgo drug tests that could dissuade or disqualify people from taking a job — either because they take drugs or simply resent the invasion of privacy.
But the most persuasive explanation for testing’ s fall from favor is that, from a business perspective, it never made much sense. Companies began to test primarily because the federal government drafted them into the war on drugs. [emphasis added]

This is an excellent trend. If it continues, eventually those companies with mandatory drug testing will begin to realize that they are at a competitive disadvantage.
The Time article also exposes one of the dirtiest tricks used by the drug testing industry — the allegation that recreational drug users were five time more likely to file worker’s compensation claims (example) and other similar contentions. The thing is, these are all complete lies.

But the benefits were always at best a bit murky. The oft-cited research, the so-called Firestone Study, was actually a 1972 speech given to lunching Firestone Tire and Rubber executives by an advocate for helping employees overcome “medical-behavioral problems” like alcoholism. The advocate, whose name has long been forgotten, mentioned drugs only in passing and never identified the source for the statistics or anything else that might make the numbers credible. Truth be told, employment experts say there has been virtually no research indicating that drug tests improve safety or productivity on the job.

You got to give the drug testing industry some backhanded credit, I guess — an entire business plan built upon a lie — and they’ve made billions off it.
I’ve stated this before, and I’ll repeat it here: I’ll never work for a company that has mandatory suspicion-less drug testing. Just for the principle of it. I could pass a drug test with flying colors (as long as they don’t test for caffeine), but I won’t be part of a company that has such poor management philosophy. I believe in personnel management done by people, not by urine. And as a manager, I’ve had no hesitations about firing someone who shows up to work drunk or stoned (you don’t need to force all your employees to piss in a cup to figure that one out). But it’s also none of my business what they do on Friday night, if they show up on Monday ready to work.
In other drug testing fields, I’ve got to say that I’m also cautiously pleased at a feeling I’m getting regarding school drug testing. While I don’t have any numbers to back it and there are school districts regularly adding drug testing around the country, I’m starting to see more and more articles where the idea is being seriously questioned by school board members and the community in terms of cost, effectiveness and the invasiveness into individual students’ privacy. Certainly, the work done by SSDP, ACLU, DPA and others in this area has made a difference. And all it takes is a couple of people to not blindly accept the claims of the drug testing industry — to ask some intelligent questions and point out the problems with drug testing.
Maybe we can get rid of this cancerous blight on our society.

“bullet” Lynn Zimmer, co-author of the outstanding Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts: A Review Of The Scientific Evidence, died on Sunday at the age of 59.
“bullet” Drug policy reformer and political candidate Ben Masel was pepper-sprayed and arrested by University of Wisconsin-Madison police as he collected signatures for his senatorial campaign. He plans to sue. (He’s already suing police in Kansas City for a different case.) Go get ’em, Ben!
“bullet” Also from the Drug War Chronicle, Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck attended a rave and said she felt safer there than at a hotel bar.

“These people using ecstasy and whatever they’re using, they are not aggressive, they’re not shouting, they’re not fighting, you don’t get people puking all over the place, it’s a far, far better environment,” Ms Kanck told ABC local radio.
“If I had a choice between being at a rave party and a hotel bar, I’d go to the rave party every time.”

“bullet” DEA raids medical marijuana dispensaries in California, and also targets doctors. Now this was a joint effort with state and local, and the DA says that they were not targeting the sick, but only those who were abusing the medical marijuana system. The problem, though, by bringing in the feds, they have forfeited any ability to make the raids appear legitimate (whether they were or not), because the feds don’t care about medical use. It’s additionally, suspect coming so soon after the Hinchey amendment vote in Congress.
Within the current system in California, there will always be some controversy over whether medical marijuana dispensaries are “getting around” the medical marijuana rules, or whether doctors are prescribing too easily. But there’s an easy solution. Legalize marijuana.

I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time.
I rarely go to the theatre, generally preferring to wait for DVD, but this one — I was ready. It opened tonight… but not in my area. Damn.

Embedded in the visionary headtrip of A Scanner Darkly is a hotly political call to arms.
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Slipped into the summer movie season like acid in your happy meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counterprogramming. […] Linklater’s return to Waking Life’s surreally pulsing world of rotoscope animation — and his flashback to Philip K. Dick’s like-titled drug dystopia of the late ’70s — is a prefab cult flick pitched to a drastically underserved group of filmgoers: stoners, depressives, bookworms, conspiracy theorists, movie critics, and various other head-scratching freaks for whom the promise of Hollywood action sounds more like a threat. What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture’s last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience.
– Rob Nelson, SF Weekly

This movie definitely isn’t for everyone, and from what I’ve heard, is a very bleak look at a drug war world that Philip K. Dick pessimistically predicted, without giving any answers, but it seems relevant to today. I’m a big fan of both Philip K. Dick and Linklater’s work.
Use this thread to discuss the movie (and assume that there may be spoilers).

Here’s what we know for sure regarding 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.

One of the things that really worried me about the ridiculous gateway assertions in the rat study below was how some of the more gullible (or outright corrupt) media outlets would play the story.
And I was right to worry. Take a look at these headlines:

• Cannabis ‘can lead to harder drugs’
• Early cannabis abuse ‘does lead to heroin addiction’
• Study: Marijuana may lead to other drugs
• Adolescent Drug Users Turn Compulsive Addicts
• Cannabis Use May Lead To Heroin Addiction
• CANNABIS IS LINKED TO HEROIN Dope kids at risk
• ‘Dope Smokers More Likely To Use Hard Drugs’
• Study: Marijuana may lead to other drugs
• Early cannabis abuse ‘leads to heroin addiction’

Remember that the study found, at most, that rats pre-treated with THC are prone to self-administer heroin more frequently than control rats after both they and the control groups are forcibly addicted to heroin by the scientists. There was no indication that the THC-pretreated group was more likely to “use” hard drugs.
Yet these media morons manage headlines like “Dope Smokers More Likely To Use Hard Drugs.”
Interestingly, it’s possible that the study may not even show what the scientists claim. Drug WarRant commenter J speculates…

First of all, as Pete pointed out, the experimenters found no evidence that rats exposed to THC in adolescence became addicted to heroin more easily than controls [“vehicle”]. They did show that THC exposure did cause the rats to use more heroin. They also showed that when the lever used for self administering heroin was disconnected, the controls pushed the lever more than the THC exposed.

This may mean that the controls were “more addicted” and did not as easily give up on getting their fix as did the THC exposed.
So why would one group use more heroin, but give up more easily when they can no longer self administer? It seems to me that being less sensitive to heroin would explain both of these. The THC exposed need to use higher doses of heroin to get the same effect as the controls, but have an easier time giving up since the heroin isn’t as potent to them. This is exactly the opposite of the conclusion of the authors:

Heightened opiate sensitivity in THC animals was also evidenced by higher heroin consumption during the maintenance phase (30 and 60 mug/kg/infusion) and greater responding for moderate-low heroin doses (dose-response curve: 7.5, 15, 30, 60, and 100 mug/kg/injection).

It doesn’t make sense to me that heightened sensitivity would lead to more use, it should lead to less use. Tolerance leads to more use.
So this may actually be evidence of a counter-gateway theory. Either way, one thing is clear: rats that do heroin get decapitated.

Interesting points.
Anyone else care to chime in on this one?
… and that last point is a good one. Regardless of whether I had cannabis as a juvenile, if I was a rat in a cage being subjected to scientific experiments that end with my decapitation, I’d be pressing that heroin lever like crazy.

Via The Drug Update, I see that someone’s trying to drag out the old gateway theory again. The gateway theory really only holds true in one respect — that people who buy marijuana have to do so from criminals who also sell other drugs, so they may be convinced to buy those as well (an argument against prohibition).
Yet people continue to try to promote or “prove” the biological effect, or “stepping stone” version of the gateway theory. The latest is at Nature.com under the fancy title: Adolescent Cannabis Exposure Alters Opiate Intake and Opioid Limbic Neuronal Populations in Adult Rats
Here’s what they claim to have discovered:

THC-pretreated rats showed an upward shift throughout the heroin self-administration acquisition… phase, whereas control animals maintained the same pattern once stable intake was obtained.

In other words, if you happen to be a THC-pretreated rat (and I’m sure there are some of you out there reading this), and you decide to use heroin, you may have the desire to increase your heroin use. If, however, you are not a THC-pretreated rat, but rather an ordinary rat, then your heroin use will probably be stable.
Their conclusion:

The current findings support the gateway hypothesis demonstrating that adolescence cannabis exposure has an enduring impact on hedonic processing resulting in enhanced opiate intake, possibly as a consequence of alterations in limbic opioid neuronal populations.

Actually, no. The gateway hypothesis (as it is popularly used by the media and politicians) has to do with an increased predilection for both the use and abuse of the latest horror drug-du-jour, ie., “marijuana will lead you to heroin addiction,” not “marijuana use when you’re young will, if you use heroin when you’re older, make it harder to quit” (if you’re a rat).
The use of the word gateway in the abstract of this study is a blatant attempt to get publicity for their study, likely with the full knowledge that their data will be misused.
Pretty poor science, considering they really don’t have much of a clue what it is that they’ve learned.
There’s one very clear rebuttal to the gateway theory. If marijuana use is dangerous because it leads to heroin addiction (as the popular theory goes), then all we need do is look at those who have tried marijuana (96.8 million Americans) and then see how many are currently addicted to heroin (No reliable figures exist for this, so using the same data standards (White House drug facts), we’ll simply go with reported past month use: 166,000. Of course, there’s no way of knowing how many of these are actually addicted, but we’ll use it anyway.)
This means that at least 99.83 percent of those who have tried marijuana have not gone on to become heroin addicts today.
Peculiar sort of gateway, where less than 2/10ths of one percent manage to find their way through it.
Update: Maia Szalavitz also finds it to be agenda-based science reporting.

Several people have passed on this bizarre specious drivel attempting to pass itself off as historical analysis by John C. Burnham.

The United States has won the war against illegal drugs. That was the conclusion of a unique gathering on June 17, which marked the 35th anniversary of the war’s beginning in 1971 with the appointment of Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, a psychiatrist, as the first White House drug czar. […]

Wow! Reminds me of this old Doonesbury strip.

The main conclusion — that we won the war on drugs — was the biggest surprise, because advocates of illegal drugs have in recent years filled the media with rhetoric about “the failed war on drugs.” The czars’ straightforward conclusion may come as a shock, but, as they outlined what the war was about, what they had to say made a lot of sense. […]

Except, of course, that he fails to then follow that with a single statement that makes any sense. Go ahead and read it. Vietnam veterans, cocaine, young kids fried on marijuana, Congress and treatment. There’s not a coherent thought that supports a single argument that he makes.
And then, Burnham destroys any sense that he has an education, let alone a license to teach at Ohio State University (prospective students take note), with this revisionist tripe:

For historians like me, the collective experience of the former czars provides two lessons. The first is unwelcome to extremists of the right and left and their shady commercial allies: Prohibitory laws can work. Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a massive, well-financed propaganda campaign.

There is one rather amusing moment in his piece where he talks about the fact that czars, ironically, had little power. However, they were sometimes able to get things done:

When new substances of abuse came along, often the czar was able to get officials and private businesses, especially pharmaceutical companies, to get one substance or another restricted before it became a major problem.

Oh, yeah. Those pharmaceutical companies are real allies in prohibition. Wonder why? (But I bet they aren’t too happy to have that particular truth presented.)
Fortunately, Maia Szalavitz was on the scene quickly with Who’s Smoking What? Drug Czars, UN Proclaim Victory in Drug War
After a casual blasting of both the UN and the Drug Czars (their arguments are hardly worthy of any real fisking), Maia concludes:

If drug warriors want to declare victory and go home, however, I’m all for it. But claim that you’ve won and maintain the same policy that spends billions and locks up millions and has virtually no effect on either drug use rates, drug-related harm or addiction rates? What have you been smoking?

Anybody know if there’s anything new on the Americans for Safe Access efforts to get Health and Human Services to respond on medical marijuana using the Data Quality Act?
As a re-cap… again… Oh, just read this.
Anyway, the last letter from HHS granting themselves a 60 day extension was on April 12. And that’s well over 60 days ago. And ASA said if they didn’t get a real response in 60 days, they’d file suit in federal court to force the issue.
So…

Paul Campos has a fascinating OpEd out that is getting some visibility…

The standard story is that Prohibition was a bad idea because it couldn’t “work.” It’s said the attempt to make America dry was doomed to failure because our legal system lacked the resources to stamp out alcohol use, at least at an acceptable price.
The problem with this story is it assumes that, if it were possible to eliminate alcohol use in America at an “acceptable” cost, then this would be a desirable thing. And that is a seriously wrongheaded belief.

We’ve talked a lot about the degree to which prohibition doesn’t work. But sometimes we are hesitant to talk about the actual positive side of alcohol and drugs.

… to make America a completely sober nation, even if it were possible, would be a terrible thing. And this point applies to many other mind-altering substances as well, to greater and lesser extents. In particular, the socially harmful effects of marijuana are almost wholly a product of the fact that its use is prosecuted as a crime, while the drug’s beneficial effects may well be comparable to those of its far more dangerous legal cousin, alcohol.
It’s not even clear that it would be desirable to completely eliminate heroin and cocaine use, assuming such a thing could be done, which of course it can’t (one of the dirty little secrets of the drug war is that many people use these drugs recreationally for years on end with little or no adverse effect).
All drugs have both good and bad effects. …

This will be a tough one for some middle-of-the-road reformers to swallow. But it’s an important point.