Drug WarRant

In the Letters section of today’s Wall Street Journal, Souder responds to an earlier article:

Mary O’Grady argues that we will never eradicate drug use. One wonders what other vices Ms. O’Grady proposes we surrender to. Child abuse? Spousal abuse? Rape? We may never eradicate any of these crimes either, but that doesn’t mean that we simply give up on them.
Not coincidentally, by the way, all of those crimes, and many others, are frequently linked to drug and alcohol abuse. It’s a tired old canard that drug abuse is a victimless crime.
Furthermore, where is the evidence that legalizing and taxing a substance causes organized crime to disappear? It sure didn’t after Prohibition — criminals just no longer focused on alcohol. Unless everything is legalized, including cocaine and heroin, of course the thugs would merely move to the more potent substances. Where does it end?

Tired old arguments devoid of logic.
Comparing drug use to rape? Oh, yeah, and this is from the guy who made a law denying financial aid to anyone with a drug conviction, but not if they were convicted of child abuse, spousal abuse, or rape.
Take his first statement above and try replacing “drug use” with “having sex” or “eating dessert” or “dancing,” and you’ll see how devoid of logic is his statement. And comparing it with other “crimes” as a reason to keep it a crime is circular reasoning.
Note also how he conflates “drug use” (first paragraph) with “drug abuse” (second paragraph).
Then, in his final paragraph, he uses some pretty dishonest arguments. First, he implies a lack of any value in legalization’s affect on organized crime unless organized crime disappears completely, ignoring a potential reduction in organized crime, ignoring the reduced profits available to criminals, and ignoring the reduced incentive for new players to enter the criminal world. Second, the notion of “thugs” merely moving on to more potent substances makes no sense unless legalization of marijuana would create a dramatically increased demand for those substances (otherwise there would be a glut of criminals working in the same arena). [Of course, we know that those substances should also be legal and regulated to reduce crime and the danger of unregulated drugs.]
For a much better letter than Mark’s, read David Bergland’s on the same page, which includes this list of the “unintended and undesirable consequences of criminalizing drugs”:

1. The price of the illegal commodity is higher than it would be in a legal, competitive, market. High black-market prices encourage low-level crime. Unlike alcohol and tobacco users, illegal drug users commit crimes to raise the funds to buy their high-price drugs.
2. Peaceful drug users, by definition, become criminals, ruining the lives of those prosecuted and thus stigmatized.
3. High black-market drug profits attract the most ruthless and violent criminals to the business. Alcohol prohibition created organized crime. Today’s drug prohibition keeps it going.
4. The illegal drug market corrupts the criminal justice system as cops, courts and prison guards find it hard to resist getting in on the high returns.
5. Law enforcement becomes more expensive for the taxpayer and is misdirected away from violent crime.
6. The products in illegal markets are of lower quality and more likely to contain impurities than they would be if legal, thus endangering consumers. No “truth in labeling” here.
7. Unnecessary illness and death result. Users spending money on high-priced drugs ignore their health. They share needles, spreading AIDS and other diseases. Cancer and MS sufferers are deprived of pain-relieving marijuana.
8. Competition in the illegal drug market is based on violence, not peaceful competition under the rule of law. Thousands of murders every year occur as a result.
9. The War on Drugs is a war on civil liberties. Your property may be seized without trial on a mere allegation that it was used in a drug deal.
10. The Drug War is racist. Although minorities use drugs at about the same rate as whites, they make up a greatly disproportionate percentage of those prosecuted and convicted.

Well said.

I have often complained that neither side of the political spectrum has been willing to consider reform in any serious way, despite the fact that drug policy reform is a benefit to both traditional conservative and traditional liberal goals.
While that’s still true in the traditional party structure, the internet is changing everything.
We’re already seeing that the blogosphere has the burgeoning capability of revolutionizing political structures (particularly on the left), with the power of sites like Daily Kos (and Markos’ successful Crashing the Gate.
And we have Glenn Greenwald (who has demonstrated a strong anti-drug-war viewpoint — see here and here) taking the internet and the publishing world by storm, with the unprecedented runaway pre-sales of his book How Would a Patriot Act, which was marketed only on the blogs.
This could lead one to believe that the issues that become part of the conversation on the internet have the potential to demand a much larger hearing.
This brings us to a post at Eschaton today that struck me as remarkably important.
Atrios, responding to Kevin Drum, noted:

But I think the “liberal netroots” does have a fairly clear consensus on a number of issues. I’m not going to claim every liberal blogger or blog reader agress with everything on this list – that’d be ridiculous – but nonetheless I’d say there’s a pretty obvious general consensus on the following:

…and included in that list was:

Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.

“Obvious general consensus.” Of course, such a weak statement has been obvious to us all along, but to see this listed in one of the top-read liberal blogs as being part of the obvious general consensus of the liberal netroots is pretty impressive.
This has to have been due, in no small part, to the constant efforts of all the drug policy reform organizations and individuals who have worked so hard to educate the internet community (and has made the internet almost exclusively the dominion of reform).
Now of course, there is also strong drug policy reform sentiment among the conservative blogosphere, although in recent years many of the former freedom-loving conservative factions (such as conservative libertarians) have all-too-willingly ceded power to the big-brother, big-government social conservatives. Additionally, the conservative blogosphere has not yet shown an ability to challenge the traditional party platform and structure. But I still have hope there as well.

Link

NEW YORK, May 8 (UPI) — In a preliminary study, U.S. researchers failed to find damage to the developing adolescent brain had occurred in those who had used marijuana moderately.
Lynn DeLisi and colleagues from the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and New York University School of Medicine used diffusion tensor imaging to scan the brain of 10 young people who had smoked cannabis during adolescence.
The participants were between 17 and 30 years old, and they said they had smoked at least two to three times a week for one or more years during adolescence and had no personal or family history of mental-health problems.
The study subjects were matched for sex, age and social class of parents with 10 controls who had not smoked marijuana regularly as teenagers.
DeLisi and colleagues found no significant differences in brain integrity and brain volume between cannabis smokers and non-smokers, but the study authors warn more research is necessary, both in a larger group of people and to see the effects of heavier use.
The findings are published in Harm Reduction Journal.

It’s important to note that this is preliminary and not comprehensive enough to rule out damage to adolescents completely, but this is interesting — particularly as the drug warriors are currently fond of claiming exactly this kind of damage.
It’s also important to note that the drug warrior argument that marijuana causes damage to adolescent brains is a red herring — marijuana legalizers generally do not favor unrestricted use of marijuana by adolescents (some kind of age restrictor is usually advocated). And legalization actually would likely reduce the use of marijuana by adolescents, given the experience in other countries and the better ability to create age restrictions for legal products.

It’s the last weekend of the semester, and I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do today, so talk amongst yourselves. Here’s some interesting reading…
“bullet” For an entertaining rant, read Kent Welton’s Drug Pogrom – On The Cruel, Fascist, Idiocy Of Prohibition II

The People who drink grains are in the statehouse while the people who smoke plants are in the jailhouse. Does this make any sense?
What we have with the war on drugs is clearly a pogrom. A pogrom is defined as “an organized massacre of helpless people.” A drug war carried on by self-righteous, grain-drinking, zealots against hapless and non-violent plant smokers surely qualifies as a pogrom… not to mention a massive violation of human and natural rights.

“bullet” In the New York Times, John Tierney compares Rush Limbaugh with Richard Paey (Times Select article, also available here or here)
“bullet” Lester Grinspoon (author of “Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine”) takes on the FDA in Puffing is the Best Medicine.
“bullet” thehim posts a letter to Calvina Fay over at the The General (for those not familiar with Jesus’ General, it’s a site that mocks morons by pretending to agree with them)

All this uproar over the supposed legalization of drugs in Mexico! The media has jumped all over it and it has sparked a lot of stupid talk about dangers to our borders.
As those who have read over the bill in more detail have noted, the bill does very little in a practical matter to liberalize drug use from current policy. It merely adds some defined amounts and actually increases penalties for many drug charges, along with expanding the ability of police to arrest people on drug charges.
Yet this little thing — the fact that they won’t throw you in jail for possessing under 5 grams of marijuana (something that’s true anyway in much of the U.S.) — has caused a firestorm. And it startles me. It seems to me that we would get less violent a reaction if a state passed the same law. Is this more of our historic racist reefer madness in play? (Just curious.)
Anyway…

MEXICO CITY — After intense pressure from the United States, President Vicente Fox has asked Congress to reconsider a law it passed last week that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs as part of a larger effort to crack down on street-level dealing.
In a statement issued late Wednesday, Mr. Fox said the law should be changed “to make it absolutely clear that in our country the possession of drugs and their consumption are and continue to be crimes.”

You may remember this story in Alaska:

The case arose in January 2002, when a torch relay for the Winter Olympics was passing by the Juneau-Douglas High School campus and students were let out of class to watch it.
Joseph Frederick, an 18-year-old senior, stood on the sidewalk and unfurled his banner as TV camera crews approached. Principal Deborah Morse crossed the street, grabbed and crumpled the banner, and told Frederick he was suspended for promoting illegal drug use.

The boy successfully took his 10-day suspension to the 9th Circuit Court:

“A school cannot censor or punish students’ speech merely because the students advocate a position contrary to government policy,” Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said in the 3-0 ruling.

Well, now the school wants to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court! And they’ve lined up a big gun — Kenneth Starr has agreed to represent the school and principal pro-bono (yes, that Kenneth Starr.

“The 9th Circuit’s decision has left the Board and school administrators with no guidance as to where and when we can enforce our policy against messages promoting illegal drug use,” said Phyllis Carlson, president of the School Board. “Federal law requires us to maintain a consistent message that use of drugs like marijuana is harmful and illegal. Yet, when we try to enforce our policies, our administrators are sued and exposed to damage awards.”

Sorry, but Federal law does not require you to enforce what other people say. I wonder what takes precedence. Your petty desire to stomp on contrary points of view? Or the First Amendment?
My prediction is in agreement with the boy’s attorney: the Supreme Court won’t even take this case.

There’s a fascinating article in Sunday’s Boston Globe that has been talked about extensively:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Here’s one of the examples that directly affects drug war policy:

Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush’s signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ”as advisory in nature.”

This sheds a little more light on the recent statement by the State Department that it was ready to “intervene” if asked by Uribe.

Wall Street Bureau Chief Kevin Helliker wins today’s prize for drinking the drug war cool-aid with this ignorant screed on marijuana and addiction.
He buys into the myth that mild psychological dependence with limited withdrawal symptoms is somehow equivalent to serious addiction.
And he leaves out critical information…

The researchers found that the overall rate of addiction among marijuana users is slightly lower than for imbibers of alcohol. But among people who use marijuana daily, the rate of addiction is significantly higher than among daily drinkers. Addiction is diagnosed when a person experiences at least three of seven indicators, such as failure to control usage, preoccupation with the drug and withdrawal symptoms.

Do you think that it might have been relevant to mention that one of those seven indicators has to do with being in conflict with the law? So one of the three necessary indicators pretty much automatically kicks in for marijuana users simply because it’s illegal? Kind of makes the comparison dishonest, doesn’t it?
But the kicker is this wild statement:

Yet if marijuana addiction were benign, thousands of Americans wouldn’t be seeking to kick the habit each year.

Kevin, you moron — yes they would — if it’s a choice between treatment and jail. Oh, but you can’t be bothered to do even a rudimentary bit of research now, can you? Just assume.

Plan Colombia called a failure

From Congress to the editorial page of Bogota’s main newspaper, criticism of the U.S.-backed anti-drug effort known as Plan Colombia Ö which has cost American taxpayers $4 billion since 2000 Ö is growing. […]
In Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe’s two main challengers in this month’s elections have used the report’s findings to reopen a debate over decriminalization of drug use.
In a Sunday editorial, the generally pro-government newspaper, El Tiempo, called the war on drugs “un fracaso,” a failure.[…]
Even supporters of the government’s reliance on aerial spraying acknowledge they were angered by the ONDCP’s admission that it has long been underestimating Colombia’s coca harvest.
“If they tried to get a job as a pollster for Congress being off by that much, they’d never work again,” said Marc Wheat, staff director of U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on drug policy. […]
A spokesman said Walters was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

Been too busy the past few days to do much posting (as well as being on the road to Iowa and Chicago).
Keep the discussions going.
If you haven’t read it already, check out thehim’s Drug War Roundup at Kos. It’s huge.