Drug WarRant

The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday, about a convention of a very interesting coalition:

Yesterday, representatives of 15 black professional organizations that formed the National African American Drug Policy Coalition in the fall met to devise a strategy for changing drug laws they say unfairly punish African-Americans.

Among the group’s leaders is Kurt L. Schmoke, who while mayor of Baltimore in 1988, called drug addiction a public health problem and advocated decriminalizing drugs. The group includes doctors, attorneys, social workers, treatment specialists and judges who endorsed some of the same solutions Schmoke advocated nearly 20 years ago.

Here’s their website.

I thought it would be good to recap just a few of the major events in drug policy reform that are in the works.

• The Supreme Court Decision in Raich v. Ashcroft. The next possible dates for a decision are April 26, April 27, May 2, and May 16.
• Raich Day of Action. If the result of the Supreme Court Decision is negative, then 50 hours later, a nationwide action will occur to raise the awareness that legislative relief is needed.
• Hinchey Rohrabacher-Amendment. If the decision is negative, you’ll be asked to contact your Congressperson to pass the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment, which prevents the federal government from using federal funds to interfere with states that have medical marijuana laws. (This is the same amendment that failed in 2004 and 2003.)
• Truth in Trials. It’s possible that such an outcome would also revive interest in the Truth in Trials Act sponsored by Senator Durbin (which allows individuals who use marijuana for medical purposes under doctor supervision to mention that fact in federal drug trials.)
• Plan Colombia Funding. Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 26) is national call-in day to protest the administration’s plans to send another $731 million to Colombia. Call your Senators and Representatives tomorrow. Perfect timing, too! Condoleeza Rice is scheduled to be in Colombia on Wednesday to promote Plan Colombia. If the call-in goes well, this could dampen Rice’s media promotion of this waste of taxpayer money.
• HR 1184, if enacted, would repeal the HEA Drug Provision that denies federal financial aid to many of those who most need it. No date set yet for considering HR 1184, although we hope it will happen during this session (currently in House Subcomittee on Workforce Protections. Take action now.
• A legal challenge was filed on Friday by the ACLU on behalf of Professor Lyle Craker, Ph.D. against the DEA, for their policy of obstructing private research that could lead to marijuana being approved as a prescription medicine. A hearing is scheduled this summer.
• Re-scheduling petition. The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis submitted a petition to re-schedule Cannabis on October 11, 2002, which was accepted by the DEA on April 3, 2003. Expected date of final response by the DEA: when hell freezes over.
• Data Quality Act Complaint. An attempt to force Health and Human Services to use their own rules to correct falsehoods about medical marijuana. Filed in October with a 60 day response time required. Given 3 extensions and finally responded by claiming to be able to fold their response into the re-scheduling petition (above). ASA has 30 days to appeal.
• “Defending America’s Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2004” — an odious bill by Rep. James Sensenbrenner. The House Judiciary Committee could vote on it this week. Take Action.
• Future Supreme Court cases of importance, include the Hoasca Tea Case and a a consent to search issue, which will be heard in the next term.
• Sativex, having cleared Canadian hurdles, will be looking for approval in the United States. GW Pharmaceuticals, understanding that medical marijuana in the U.S. is a matter of politics, not merely of clinical trials, has hired Andrea Barthwell to lobby.

If I’ve left out anything important, let me know — this is just off the top of my head.
And, of course, this is just the national scene — there’s tons going on at the state level. See, in particular, Grits for Breakfast for everything happening in Texas, and follow Loretta for news from Alabama.
The really positive thing when you look at this list is that drug policy reformers are using every tool at their disposal – legislative, executive, judiciary, science, public awareness, states, etc. It’s necessary to combat the intense propaganda paid for by our own tax dollars, and it’s this kind of comprehensive effort that has the best chance of eventual success.

Daksya has a diary entry over at Nephalim’s Drug War Revealed asking whether people think drug use would increase a little, a lot, or none under legalization.
Go give your opinion.

The Marijuana Policy Project reports that they will hold a telephone press conference today at noon to discuss “developments in the effort to overcome Drug Enforcement Administration obstruction of medical marijuana research.”
Participating:

Lyle Craker, Ph.D., director, medicinal plant program, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Rick Doblin, Ph.D., president, Multidisciplinary Institute for Psychedelic Studies; Allen Hopper, staff attorney, ACLU; Steve Fox, director of government relations, Marijuana Policy Project; Phillip Alden, patient living with AIDS who dropped out of a medical marijuana study due to the low quality of government-grown marijuana that researchers are forced to use.

And more on this in the Washington Times: ACLU enters marijuana research dispute

The ACLU said it filed a statement with a federal administrative law judge opposing the DEA’s refusal to allow University of Massachusetts Professor Lyle Craker to grow the alternative source of research-grade marijuana. …

The ACLU said it will host a conference Monday on “the federal government’s pattern and practice of blocking scientists from conducting research on the medical benefits of marijuana, and how this obstruction of research affects the current legal debate over medical marijuana, particularly in the U.S. Supreme Court in Raich v. Ashcroft.”

[Looks like some more pro-pot organizers who don’t give a rat’s ass about patients — right, Mark?]

I just noticed Mark Kleiman’s post about Sativex.
He does a fairly good job of summarizing the situation, and talks about how the advent of Sativex may affect the framing of the debate on both sides of the medical marijuana issue. So far, OK, (although I don’t agree with him that, for political reasons, “the pro-drug side — apart from Rick Doblin’s MAPS — has [been] denying the need for research.” That’s a crass over-simplification. The pro-drug side has, in fact, asserted that there is sufficient research already to allow for medical marijuana use and re-scheduling. We simply are not going to bend over and let the government continue to assert a requirement for more research as a delaying tactic, while blocking research at the same time. We would welcome more legitimate research.)
After Mark explained the mechanisms that are behind the way the two sides are framing the debate, he ends up his post with this extraordinarily offensive comment:

If you guessed from the above that neither side of the drug-policy debate actually gives a rat’s ass about sick people, you’re a remarkably good guesser.

Now I often consider Kleiman to be an intelligent fellow, so I don’t think this remark is the result of abject stupidity. I’m hoping it was ill-considered, glib rhetoric — you know, to give the end of the post some kind of personal pizazz. Either that, or it was an attempt to maintain his “cred” as a “balanced” expert, so he could continue to get lucrative gigs in that area (in which case, if you guessed that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the truth, you’d be a remarkably good guesser.)
Let me lay it out clearly, in case Mark’s actually stupid.
Pro-pot side
The (as he calls it) “pro-pot” position is that marijuana should be legal. We recognize (and fully admit) that acceptance of medical marijuana will help legalization, so we frame our debate in that way. The mere fact that we frame our debate does not mean that we don’t care about medical marijuana patients — our goals follow the same path.
There may be some individuals in the pro-pot community that don’t care about sick people, but that can’t be determined by our position on marijuana. Personally, even if marijuana was somehow not an interesting or useful recreational substance, I would be fully behind stopping the indefensible government interference with medical treatment.
If those on the pro-pot side didn’t care about sick people to further our goals, there might be other things that we’d do. For example, we might try to get Marinol taken off the market somehow, in the hopes that having one less medicine available would increase the pressure on legalizing medical marijuana. Or, in fact, we’d discourage the development of Sativex. Mark, oddly, calls our support of Sativex part of an inconsistent set of positions, but it’s actually proof that, while Sativex makes our overall message in some ways more complex, we desire its approval for medical marijuana patients.
I get tired of being told that because I support legalization, I don’t really care about sick people. It’s false and offensive. It’s also logically an improper construction. Imagine your wife has come down with an illness. She has a job offer that she must accept by next month (with a huge increase in pay), but she can only do so if she’s well. If you hope that she gets well quickly and is able to take that job, does that mean that you don’t give a rat’s ass about her health?
The drug warrior side
Now the drug warrior part of Mark’s statement is indisputable. The drug warriors have also known that acceptance of medical marijuana will help legalization, so they have resisted medical marijuana (beyond that of any other controlled substance) by restricting research, demonizing and lying about medical marijuana, lobbying against medical marijuana laws, and so forth. They have actively used taxpayer’s dollars to prevent sick people from using medicine. They have caused people’s deaths. They have sent armed federal agents to arrest sick people and yank up their medicine.
To put me in the same category with these monsters is offensive, and I hope Mark A.R. Kleiman will have the courtesy to apologize.
Update:

Edit: Section referencing correspondence, and my responses, removed by request.

Thanks for all the notes and responses recently regarding a whole lot going on in the world of drug policy.
On a personal note, the last couple of days have been extremely busy for me (in good ways), so I apologize to anyone who has written if I haven’t gotten around to responding.
I just opened a production today of Stephen Sondheim’s Passion at Illinois State University (I’m most of the orchestra — piano/conductor — for a small student production). If you’re in the area, two more performances will be held tomorrow (Saturday, April 23 at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm) in Allen Theatre (admission is free). I’ve been in rehearsal four hours a night, six nights a week in addition to work.
I’m also faculty advisor for a student group that’s currently holding a four-square marathon (yes, four-square) for student scholarships, which is now in its 38th hour, so sleep is something I don’t quite remember.
I’m going to keep a close eye on the big news — including Raich (next possible decision dates are Tuesday and Wednesday — April 26/27). But I may miss some of the smaller stories over the next few days.

OK, so Health and Human Services finally responded to the Americans for Safe Access Data Quality Act complaint regarding their information about medical marijuana (background).
After several self-awarded extensions to their response, they essentially came up with a complete non-response response.
Shorter version: We found a loophole that allows us, instead of actually responding as required by law in a timely manner, to provide input into another process that has almost no time limit, so we can delay telling the truth indefinitely.
Here’s the critical part of their response:

Both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the HHS Information Quality Guidelines provide that federal government agencies may use existing processes that are in place t address correction requests from the Public. In the case of marijuana HHS currently is in the process of conducting a review in response to the petition for change that was submitted to DEA in October 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC), an association of public-interest groups and medical cannabis patients that includes the ASA. [2] In the course of the review, HHS will evaluate an the publicly available peer reviewed literature on the efficacy of marijuana [punctuation and spelling errors in original]

What a load of crap. It’s because the re-scheduling process has historically gone for years and years of delays that we hoped the Data Quality Act would give us some ammunition, with its specific requirement of 60 day response time. Now they’re completely folding their (unspecified) response into the interminal delays of re-scheduling.
Now we have to see if ASA will appeal the “response.”

Former Deputy Drug Czar Andrea Barthwell (more about her here) is, as has been mentioned, the new spokesperson for getting GW Pharmaceuticals’ Sativex approved for use in the United States.
This is SO right for so many wrong reasons.

Drug Cops Seek to Use Monkey in Enforcement Efforts
at TalkLeft

One of the things prohibitionists love to go on about is protecting our youth. And how do they want to do it? By taking away the rights of young people (pee in a cup, get sniffed by dogs) and by passing harsh criminal penalties for drug crimes near schools and parks, etc.
None of these methods are very effective, and none even come close to paying off in value compared to the negative effects they have on society.
On the other hand, we have a system that is far from perfect, but could be useful for reducing youth marijuana use — it’s called regulated sale with age restrictions (used for products like alcohol and tobacco). It’s likely to be more effective than the methods we use now, without the negative effects.
But there’s one other point that people don’t talk about much.
Travis is a regular reader of Drug WarRant. He’s 17, and he wrote to tell me about a conversation he had recently with some of his friends of the same age.
One of them said:

“Yeah, but if they were to legalize it, it wouldn’t even be fun anymore. It wouldn’t even be worth doing.”

Taking away the lure of the forbidden.
There’s a whole lot of truth here. Kris Millegan recently noted:

Once a substance is banned and enters a black market, the age of the users goes down, the volume of abuse goes up, and civil and criminal corruption rises.

Part of that shift in the age of users is due to black market sellers targeting that group, but also part of it is the allure. And when you remove it from the black market, the reverse happens.
In the Netherlands, where you can legally buy marijuana at the local coffee shop, teen marijuana use rates have been lower than in the United States. I’ve read numerous stories of travelers and locals (including law enforcement officers) saying that since it’s legal, it’s perceived by young people as not being as “cool.”
That doesn’t mean that people don’t use it, but that there’s less of a reason for young people to join in.
Recently in The Guardian, Zoe Williams wrote about the changes in classification for marijuana in Britain:

Since it was reclassified from class B to class C at the beginning of last year, cannabis has lost its lustre, especially for the young. …

It has made everyone lose interest. You might just as well have dressed this drug up in a sailor suit and sent it on tour with Geri Halliwell. It just isn’t cool anymore.

Legalize it. You know — for the kids.