Drug WarRant

Oh, how the media love their drug scares. Recently, everyone was talking about the new drug krokodil, from Russia — some poison concoction that basically melts your flesh. It was the latest thing to hit the streets in the U.S. and was showing up all over the country.

Except… not so much.

Krokodil: This supposed new drug epidemic now seems faker than ever (and it already seemed very, very fake)

Disregard the American Journal of Medicine article, then [which was withdrawn], and we’re left with zero verified cases of krokodil abuse in the United States—some drug epidemic this is.

One of the things that had made me skeptical of the krokodil story was the question as to why people would want to use it, when there were other things available that didn’t, you know, eat your flesh.

The Dispatch piece goes on to explain why it’s unlikely that krokodil will ever catch on here. Krokodil is used in Russia and Eastern Europe because real heroin is scarce in those places, and, to an addict, a flesh-rotting heroin substitute synthesized from codeine and paint thinner is better than no heroin at all. But in the United States, heroin is not hard to find, and drug users here have no reason to resort to such desperate measures. As the Dispatch suggests, the only way that krokodil might become a thing is if the media keeps hyping it, thus leading curious people to try and acquire this famous new drug. Your move, journalists.

When someone running for Congress is advertising in this way, we know that there’s been a sea change in public opinion.

http://youtu.be/4qlqxL-J6-s

I admit to curiosity regarding the ONDCP’s strangely promoted “Drug Policy Reform Conference” that starts in a few minutes.

Join the first-ever ONDCP #DrugPolicyReform Conference at the White House. Monday, 9 AM EST: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

Apparently, it’ll be continuing until 1 pm EST. I’ll be unable to follow most of the proceedings live, so if you’re able (and willing), let us know in comments what they’re covering. I assume it’ll focus on treatment.

This release should provide a little glimpse into how this was set up. Very little publicity by the ONDCP – most has apparently been through the select organizations it invited.

So… the White House has an announcement.

Join the first-ever ONDCP #DrugPolicyReform Conference at the White House. Monday, 9 AM EST: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

ONDCP Drug Policy Reform Conference. The ultimate oxymoron.

How much you wanna bet there won’t be any actual drug policy reformers invited?

FWIW… Mark Kleiman, pot’s go-to guy – In the Los Angeles Times

Drug Defendants Are Being ‘Forced’ To Plead Guilty, Report Claims

This is one of those really scary parts about the loss of justice due to the drug war that we’ve been talking about for some time.

Only 3 percent of U.S. drug defendants in federal cases chose to go to trial instead of pleading guilty in 2012, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. […]

The effect, she argues, is that prosecutors essentially “force” defendants to plead guilty. […]

And the majority of those who did go to trial — 89 percent of them — lost. […]

“Justice would almost stand still if we took the majority of our cases to trial,” he said.

Make no mistake about it. The innocent get swept up with the ‘guilty.’ This is not a ‘justice’ system.

. Happy repeal day! 80 years ago today, the 21st Amendment was ratified.

NYPD Arrests Man For Possession of Breath Mints

Arrested, handcuffed and held for 30 hours.

I do enjoy the Onion. So many great satirical pieces, that sometimes catch people because they’re just close enough to being real.

This one caught my attention today: New Report Shows Many U.S. Businesses Actually Just Fronts For Moneymaking Operations

When reading it, I was immediately struck by how similar this satire is to the actual ways federal attorneys and the DEA always characterize medical marijuana dispensaries that they’ve raided.

…

And as a bonus, check out this hilarious video from the Onion:

Bloomberg Defends NYPD’s Controversial Stop And Kiss Program

This weekend, Rafael LeMaitre tweeted about a new Presidential proclamation, saying:

POTUS: Impaired drivers involved in nearly 1/3 of all deaths from motor vehicle crashes in the U.S., taking almost 30 lives each day.

Here is the actual Presidential Proclamation naming December as National Impaired-Driving Prevention Month. Note the same wording. Rafael’s quote of it would seem to indicate its importance in the document (perhaps he wrote it for the Prez).

Impaired drivers are involved in nearly one-third of all deaths from motor vehicle crashes in the United States, taking almost 30 lives each day.

It seems to me that the average citizen, seeing that passage, would take it as reading that impaired drivers (including a variety of impairments such as alcohol and other drugs) were responsible for 30 deaths daily.

But it’s not true.

It’s quite likely that the referenced statistic comes from this governmental report (or a similar one): CDC – Impaired Driving Facts

Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to one death every 48 minutes.

In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.

Wait a second! Note the use of the word “alcohol”? That wasn’t in the Presidential Proclamation. Of course not. The Proclamation was about impaired drivers of all kinds (particularly given this government’s attempts to push for harsher laws on cannabis and driving). The statistic was a compelling one, but didn’t fit their agenda, so they dropped the word “alcohol.” Interesting.

It may still be technically accurate, but it’s a lie — an intentional effort to deceive the public in order to bolster their argument

But let’s look a little further.

If you go back to the source information from the NHTSA, you discover that their use of “impaired” is not the english language definition of the word, but rather an arbitrary political/legal definition.

Drivers are considered to be alcohol-impaired when their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher. Thus, any fatal crash involving a driver with a BAC of .08 or higher is considered to be an alcohol- impaired-driving crash, and fatalities occurring in those crashes are considered to be alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities. The term “driver” refers to the operator of any motor vehicle, including a motorcycle.

Ah, so it was those drivers who were technically “impaired” by alcohol who caused those 30 deaths each day.

Wait. Not so fast.

The term “alcohol-impaired” does not indicate that a crash or a fatality was caused by alcohol impairment.

Oh.

Now we’re finally getting a picture of reality, although it’s clearly impossible to know how many people die because of impaired drivers.

This, of course, doesn’t lend itself to a dramatically scary opening to a Presidential Proclamation, but why can’t we talk about having a month to make people aware of not driving impaired… without lying?

This matters for a couple of important reasons:

1. The government works for the people. Lying to them is a serious violation of their Constitutional power and trust (and often their oath of office) and should be grounds for firing.
2. In some cases the lies are also designed to undermine the will of the people, as in the push for zero tolerance per se laws for cannabis and driving from the ONDCP. Those laws do absolutely nothing to make the roads safer, so it’s not a stretch to accuse the ONDCP of not caring a damn about road safety, but rather looking for another way to harm those who support cannabis.

Kerlikowske does it again in this article: Marijuana’s risk to drivers debated

Research is incomplete on how much marijuana it takes to impair driving. But Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said being even a little intoxicated on marijuana is unacceptable.

“even a little intoxicated… is unacceptable” What does that mean? Where’s the science? Where’s the truth?

And this kind of talk from the federal government emboldens local officials into really pulling the most bizarre stuff out of their ass.

And in Washington, according to Chuck Hayes of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, tests confirming the presence in drivers of THC – marijuana’s active ingredient – have made up 42 percent of the state’s toxicology lab caseload this year, an increase from 26 percent last year.

“I’m not sure the public really understands the danger of it,” said Hayes, a retired Oregon State Police captain who trains police officers to be drug-recognition experts.

What danger? The danger of increased drug testing? ‘Cause that’s all you’ve shown.

Meanwhile, the only reasonable science-based truthful words are coming from reformers:

Marijuana advocates acknowledge that driving under the influence of cannabis is ill-advised. But they argue that law enforcement’s concern is overblown, and point to a 2012 study that concluded the auto accident risk posed by marijuana is on par with antihistamines and penicillin.

But the government isn’t interested in telling the truth. They want to scare people into supporting their agenda. Nothing else matters.

Now, I do a lot of driving and I’m right there in wanting to increase safety on the roads. But I want accurate information and scientific analysis of comparable dangers.

And I think that it’s good to talk about the increased safety we’re already experiencing. Check out this amazing chart:

That’s some incredible progress we’ve made, and we should celebrate that. I’m sure it comes from a variety of factors – safer roads, safer cars, better education, and others.

Maybe we can do better. But we’ll do it through science and policy analysis, not through fear-mongering… or lying.

In 2005, RAND published How Goes the “War on Drugs”? An Assessment of U.S. Drug Problems and Policy by Jonathan P. Caulkins, Peter H. Reuter, Martin Y. Iguchi, James Chiesa.

Its claim:

Presents a concise, accessible, objective view of where the United States has been, now stands, and is going in the future in its long “war on drugs.” The authors assess the success of drug policies to date and review possible reasons why they have not been more successful. They consider the drug war’s “collateral damage” and attempt to understand why alternative policies have not been tried. They also lay out some possible futures for drug problems and policy in the United States. The authors recommend that a mix of three drug control strategies-enforcement, treatment, and prevention-be timed to a drug’s “epidemic cycle.” …

Despite this claim to be analyzing, looking to the future, and making recommendations, they refused to even consider one of the most important policy options that existed:

“Nor do we explore the merits and demerits of legalizing drugs, even though legalization is perhaps the most prominent and hotly debated topic in drug policy. Our analysis takes current policy as its starting point, and the idea of repealing the nation’s drug laws has no serious support within either the Democratic or Republican party. Moreover, because legalization is untested, any prediction of its effects would be highly speculative.

That has been the state of drug policy analysis in this country for far too long. It’s essentially ‘We don’t know how it’ll work, and partly because we’ve been unwilling to discuss it, there hasn’t been enough political interest, so even though it might be the best policy, we won’t consider it.’ That’s political lackeyism, not policy analysis and guidance. And it’s certainly not leadership.

8 years later, now that Gallup has shown 58% national approval for legalizing marijuana, RAND is promoting its new page: Hot Topic: Marijuana Legalization, featuring articles from the past 20 years, under that new heading.

Isn’t it nice that they’re willing to talk about the “L” word?

Of course, back in 2005, they were perfectly willing to make recommendations regarding enforcement, treatment, and prevention, but today, they’re not willing to do so regarding legalization.

We do not have an official policy position on marijuana reform and more generally RAND does not advocate for or against legislation at any level of government.

Ah.

Of course, that’s not really true, either. While RAND as an organization may not have explicitly given a policy position, they’ve continually produced reports that seemed designed (and sometimes even timed) to be usable by those opposing legalization referenda (without much countering when the data is misused).

And they haven’t been able to keep a leash on their rabid drug war supporter Rosalie Pacula (co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center) who has often appeared in the media bluntly in opposition to legalization.

We welcome RAND to the dialog. Now we encourage them to join the 21st Century.

This is a very positive sign…

Leaked paper reveals UN split over war on drugs

Major international divisions over the global “war on drugs” have been revealed in a leaked draft of a UN document setting out the organisation’s long-term strategy for combating illicit narcotics.

The draft, written in September and seen by the Observer, shows there are serious and entrenched divisions over the longstanding US-led policy promoting prohibition as an exclusive solution to the problem.

Instead, a number of countries are pushing for the “war on drugs” to be seen in a different light, which places greater emphasis on treating drug consumption as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice matter.

It is rare for such a document to leak. Normally only the final agreed version is published once all differences between UN member states have been removed.

What’s telling is not only the divisions in the early draft, but the fact that there was a leak. Usually, drug policy reps from countries want to show a united front to the world. Somebody was willing to cause a stir.

And in reading the article, it’s fascinating that there quite a range of countries objecting to drug war business as usual for a number of reasons.

Here’s an interesting data point that may have some real significance. It’s possible that we’re reaching a point where even politicians are hesitating when it comes to new prohibitions.

Theresa May humiliated as MPs reject call to ban khat

Theresa May’s ban on khat was not based on any evidence of medical or social harm and must be stopped before it becomes law, an influential committee of MPs found today.

In a humiliating move for the home secretary, the home affairs committee recommended that the government halt plans to ban the drug, which is popular among some African communities.

“It is extremely worrying that such an important decision has not been taken on the basis of evidence or consultation,” chairman Keith Vaz said.

“The expert Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs conducted a thorough review of the evidence and concluded that no social or medical harm resulted from the use of Khat.”

Apparently this was a big surprise, since usually any kind of drugs ban by the government would be supported without question.