Drug WarRant

There has been so much hype over concerns regarding “all the drugged drivers on the road” once marijuana is legalized, and it has been just plain dishonest. Sure, driving impaired is a bad idea regardless of the impairment. But there are many kinds of impairment and many degrees of impairment, and it’s important to know where on the risk scale this lies in order to craft useful public policy.

Driving angry is a terrible impairment, yet we are unlikely to develop a national policy of enforcing a zero-tolerance no-drive rule after getting in an argument.

We know that heavy alcohol use results in some of the highest risks of driving impairment, so it is fitting that we focus efforts on reducing drunk driving and enforcing drunk driving laws. It would be irresponsible to pull resources away from that clear danger toward a much lower risk factor.

And yet, that’s exactly what we’re doing by pushing for zero-tolerance per se laws for cannabis.

This latest study from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs once again points out quite clearly this fact.

Drugs and Alcohol: Their Relative Crash Risk – Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Report by Eduardo Romano, Pedro Torres-Saavedra, Robert B. Voas, John H. Lacey

Results: For both sober and drinking drivers, being positive for a drug was found to increase the risk of being fatally injured. When the drug-positive variable was separated into marijuana and other drugs, only the latter was found to contribute significantly to crash risk. In all cases, the contribution of drugs other than alcohol to crash risk was significantly lower than that produced by alcohol.

Conclusions: Although overall, drugs contribute to crash risk regardless of the presence of alcohol, such a contribution is much lower than that by alcohol. The lower contribution of drugs other than alcohol to crash risk relative to that of alcohol suggests caution in focusing too much on drugged driving, potentially diverting scarce resources from curbing drunk driving. [emphasis added]

Exactly.

In reading the full article (yes, I shelled out the $30 for it – let me know if you have any questions about the article itself so you don’t have to), it was interesting to read the article’s authors’ astonishment at discovering that cannabis had so little effect on its own to crash risk. They pointed out the possibility (of which we’ve known for a long time) of drivers who have used cannabis being more aware and thus cautious.

They also pointed out that the government data from which they drew counted any amount of the drug showing up in tests and therefore likely included many drivers who had not recently consumed cannabis. But that’s perhaps an appropriate population to have in your sample when pointing out the stupidity of a public policy that promotes zero-tolerance per se laws.

Scientific American: Pot Smokers Might Not Turn into Dopes after All

This won’t be a surprise to anyone here, but it is an important rebuttal to all the prohibitionists who have been citing the New Zealand longitudinal “Dunedin” study as proof of the harmfulness of cannabis.

Cannabis rots your brain — or does it? Last year, a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggested that people who used cannabis heavily as teenagers saw their IQs fall by middle age. But a study published today — also in PNAS — says that factors unrelated to cannabis use are to blame for the effect.

Prohibitionists are constantly searching for some kind of smoking gun that they can use against cannabis legalization, and so they use science not to discover the truth, but to find any kind of evidence of what they want to be true. And naturally, they find it.

This is a clear form of confirmation bias. If they took more time (and willingness) to actually study the science, in most cases they would find other possible explanations for the same results, and would also question why this didn’t show up elsewhere.

Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, says that Røgeberg’s analysis definitely supports the idea that links between adolescent cannabis use and drops in IQ are essentially spurious, arising from socioeconomic differences rather than any sort of pharmacological action. John Macleod of the University of Bristol, UK, who works on the ALSPAC data, points out that Meier and her colleagues acknowledged in their original paper that the results might be caused by confounding factors. He adds that the modelling in Røgeberg’s paper shows that within a set of reasonable assumptions, this is indeed possible.

Colorado’s legal marijuana industry has been in operation for a full week now, and despite long lines, the cannabis stores have been able to serve local residents as well as tourists from around the country.

So it was with some surprise that it was discovered that Richard Silverman, a Denver resident who lives less than a block from one of the new stores, had failed to purchase any cannabis.

Authorities are baffled.

Channel 7 Action News caught up with Mr. Silverman to try to clear up this mystery.

Channel 7: We’re naturally curious as to what happened to you this week that prevented you from purchasing cannabis. Were you ill, or going through some kind of emergency?

Silverman: No, I was fine, actually. I saw the open store and could have gone, but I wasn’t interested.

Channel 7: What do you mean?

Silverman: I’m just not all that interested in cannabis. I’ve tried it, but it’s not my thing.

Channel 7: You realize that it’s legal now?

Silverman: Oh, yes. And I have no problem with others choosing to buy it. I think it’s great that it’s legal. I just didn’t want any.

Channel 7: I don’t understand.

Others find the case of Richard Silverman more than just puzzling…

Kevin Sabet, spokesperson for Smart Approaches to Marijuana (S.A.M.), an organization well-known in the media for pretending to have an alternative policy approach to marijuana, believes that “there’s something really fishy there.”

“You don’t just say ‘no’ to Big Marijuana,” said Sabet. “Silverman is clearly lying and should probably be referred for treatment.”

In related news, Colorado officials announced today that the all-out disintegration of society is unlikely to occur until after the second week of legal marijuana sales.

As someone who was raised in the church and spent a lot of time studying Christianity, I am constantly bewildered by the number of idiots who somehow think that Christian morality is achieved through secular law.

Larry Tomczak with the Christian Post brings us 4 More Reasons to Reject Legalizing Marijuana

It’s an OpEd full of hypocrisy and random nonsense. Love the argument by anecdote:

Matthew Leahy was in the newspapers a short time ago where it stated he started smoking marijuana at 14, experienced a drop in grades and then eventually ended up in a mental hospital, where he hung himself. A more uplifting testimony is the one I heard personally of a ninth-grader who regularly smoked pot, which he said “really messed up [his] mind,” but he was grateful to God that he had been set free from the addiction that was ruining his life.

But this is the kicker. Check out this defense of alcohol and see if you can find the evidence for keeping marijuana illegal.

Many marijuana advocates will tell you that we already allow alcohol, so why shouldn’t we allow pot? Granted, beer and wine and adult beverages have been around for thousands of years, and unfortunately some people abuse them. Scripture speaks of moderation and obeying the governing authorities (Rom. 13:1-8) regarding laws. Adult beverages are a cultural reality, and it was foolishness when people tried to prohibit their usage because, in fact, the Bible doesn’t prohibit their responsible use.

Just because some people overindulge and do harm due to alcohol, that is not a valid reason to exacerbate the situation by adding dope to the mix! I’m sure you’ve heard the adage “Don’t point to bad behavior to justify more bad behavior.”

Here’s the deal:

• 33,000 Americans are killed yearly in traffic accidents, one-third because of drunk drivers. How many others are left impaired or paralyzed for life?
• 1.2 million drivers are arrested annually for drunken-driving. The highest number is among 21- to 25-year-olds.
• One in three people will be involved in a drunk driving crash in their lifetime.
• Car crashes are the leading cause of deaths for teens. Teenage alcoholic use kills over 4,700 every year.
• Drunk driving costs you and me $132 billion a year.

Be honest with yourself: In light of the above, do you want to compound these sobering statistics by making marijuana freely available?

A deterrent to drinking and driving is the alcohol aroma on one’s breath. That basically goes out the window when people think they can smoke a few joints outside, drive “high” down the highway and never dream of one day standing before a judge with a weeping father who lost the love of his life and three children via an intoxicated driver. Think about it, along with the prison term and lifetime of guilt that follows.

Ironically, the author obliviously ends the OpEd with a plea to consider the violence in Mexico!

(Also ironically, he claims that pot makes you stupid.)

Here’s a wild one. Emily Miller — a senior editor for the Washington Times.

MILLER: Obama’s cultural legacy is legal marijuana blowing through America. Stoned citizens will further burden the dependency society

This demonstrates how activists are totally uneducated about the severe consequences of smoking pot.

Cully Stimson was a prosecutor in drug court in San Diego and has served as a military trial judge.

“There’s already a significant number of D.C. residents involved in the criminal justice system,” the senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation told me in an interview. “By telling them that marijuana is a medicine and not a drug, then legalizing it, you’re going to have a stoned, dependent community that is even worse than today.”

Mr. Stimson, a former defense attorney, has written extensively on drug policies and the dangers of marijuana. He predicts that Colorado’s social experiment will fail badly.

“Nothing positive will come out of it,” he stated. “You’re going to have lower test scores and a class of people who are unemployable because they are stoned all the time. People are going to die on ski slopes, on the roads.”

The think tank expert further explained, “Countries that have legalized marijuana have experienced negative social effects. They’ve seen more dependency — marijuana is highly addictive and a gateway to harder drugs — and more crime and a bigger black market because the drug cartels undercut legal sellers and also target youth.”

Marijuana proponents who claim that pot is no different than alcohol are ignorant of the science. The body can process alcohol, and in many studies, a few drinks have been proven to have health benefits. Marijuana, on the other hand, is simply a toxin. Pot is more similar to heroin and cocaine than alcohol in how it affects the body.

Prohibitionists in the U.S. and around the world are reeling from the recent cannabis developments in Washington, Colorado, Uruguay, etc., resulting in truly pathetic attempts to defend their position.

Before long, they may have a new headache…

Bolivia urges internationally legal coca leaf

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has assumed the chairmanship of the Group of 77 nations and said he would use his new international platform to have coca leaf, which can be refined into cocaine, removed from the list of internationally banned drugs. […]

Bolivia was chosen head of the G-77, which actually groups 133 developing nations, by consensus, and Morales was at the United nations on Wednesday to take over the chairmanship from outgoing Fiji.

At a news conference, Morales took pride in saying that “Last year, we achieved recognition of traditional consumption of the coca leaf,” a mild stimulant chewed to relieve altitude sickness and to elevate the mood in Andean nations.

Bolivia had pulled out of the Vienna Convention anti-drug treaty in 2011, but last year it was allowed to rejoin with the reservation that it would not prosecute coca leaf chewing. Bolivia regards its readmission as an international concession of the legality of the traditional social use of coca leaf.

“Our next task will be to remove the coca leaf from the list of prohibited substances,” he told reporters, speaking through a translator.

Nice.

Can’t wait until Kevin Sabet hears we’re opening a coca tea shop.

Jacob Sullum nails it once again with Pathetic Pot Prohibitionists

This is what passes for smart commentary among pot prohibitionists. Colorado’s path-breaking legalization of the marijuana business has revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of people who think violence is an appropriate response to consumption of psychoactive substances they do not like.

People like Kevin Sabet, the former Office of National Drug Control Policy official who co-founded Project SAM. Sabet’s main strategy for defending prohibition consists of pairing the word big with the word marijuana, based on the assumption that Americans will flee in terror from the resulting phrase.

Nancy Grace: Legalizing marijuana for recreational use is a ‘horrible idea’

Grace is not a fan of the law, telling Baldwin she thinks that legalizing marijuana for recreational use is a “horrible idea.” Grace said that she wouldn’t want anyone on pot to take care of her kids or drive a cab. She then went for the jugular, claiming that anyone who disagreed with her was “lethargic, sitting on the sofa, eating chips … fat and lazy.”

I’ve done more good for this world during the time I was sitting on the sofa, eating chips, than Nancy Grace has done in her entire career.

How Colorado disrupted the drug war by David Sirota

I think this is a must-read for strategists in drug policy. You may disagree, but the points make a lot of sense.

We know, for instance, that despite polls showing that Americans appreciated all the legitimate financial, logistical and human rights reasons to oppose the Iraq War, the country kept voting for politicians who supported that war, in part, because the war was sold as a security necessity. Similarly, while polls show Americans are uncomfortable with the National Security Administration’s mass surveillance, they also show that many are willing to tolerate it in the (factually unsubstantiated) belief that they have stopped terrorism.

It’s the same dynamic for drug policy — in Tvert’s words, no matter how compelling the financial, moral and civil rights case is for drug policy reform, in today’s fear-based political environment, “If people think something is going to kill them and their child, regardless of whether it is actually true, they will never support it.”

And that, of course, fits with the prohibitionists approach: fear, fear, fear. They trot out every discredited study to try to show that cannabis is harmful.

The answer in Colorado was to compare it to something people already know well — alcohol. Hence the “Marijuana is Safer” campaign.

“There are still drug policy reform groups who choose to avoid this message,” he says with a sigh, as we discuss MPP’s new plans to mount legalization bids in Alaska, Arizona and Maine. “There are some advocates who think that it will make people think marijuana is bad because alcohol is bad. Some think we shouldn’t be disparaging alcohol. Others are worried about the stories that suggest it may be upsetting the alcohol industry. But here’s the thing that can’t be ignored: this message has been incredibly successful.”

Conor Friedersdorf nails it: It Is Immoral to Cage Humans for Smoking Marijuana — in The Atlantic

There are times when locking human beings in cages is morally defensible. If, for example, a person commits murder, rape, or assault, transgressing against the rights of others, then forcibly removing him from society is the most just course of action. In contrast, it is immoral to lock people in cages for possessing or ingesting a plant that is smoked by millions every year with no significant harm done, especially when the vast majority of any harm actually done is borne by the smoker.

That there are racial disparities in who is sent to prison on marijuana charges is an added injustice that deserves attention. But if blacks and whites were sent to prison on marijuana charges in equal proportion, jail for marijuana would still be immoral.

America has used marijuana charges to cage people for so long that it seems unremarkable. The time has come to see the status quo for what it is. A draconian punishment for a victimless crime has been institutionalized and normalized, so much so that even proponents of the policy are blind to its consequences. […]

I submit that a more urgent problem is Americans who shy away from talk about the dubious moral status of marijuana prohibition. It is, at its core, an exercise in using people as means to an end. The end is maintaining a stigma against marijuana use. And the means is locking humans in cages with dangerous people.

One day, we will look back at that tradeoff in moral horror.

Exactly.

As has been noted in comments, there have been tons more media reaction to the ignorant columns by Brooks and Marcus. If you haven’t watched the Chris Hayes video about his own experience having to do with class privilege in the drug war, you should.

We really should thank David Brooks and Ruth Marcus (and a few others in their category) for creating such a firestorm of discussion about cannabis in the media.

Boy, have times changed! Remember when the drug czar would just put out a press release and all the media would dutifully print the lies? We still have a ways to go, but there are powerful national discussions happening now, and that’s a good thing for us. It was critial to break through the national fog caused by the propaganda of prohibition.

Colo. Teen Addiction Centers Gear Up for Legal Pot

While many Coloradoans rang in the new ear by lining up outside marijuana dispensaries for a celebratory toke, some rehab centers are prepping for an increase in marijuana-addicted patients in 2014, especially teenage users.

Classic scare story technique, completely bought by ABC News.

Will Marijuana Retailers Target the Poor and Minorities?

I haven’t watched this debate between David Frum and Andrew Sullivan, but I can bet the title comes from something David Frum is claiming. It fits with the tactics of Frum, Kennedy, Sabet, et al. And it is so incredibly offensive, given how prohibition has actually targeted the poor and minorities in devastating ways for decades now.

(Tell me if I’m wrong about the debate.)

Both of these stories (along with the one about the toddler) have been tweeted by ONDCP spokesperson Raphael LeMaitre, proving to those who didn’t already know, that the ONDCP prefers unsubstantiated scare stories to facts.