Drug WarRant

This USA Today piece, which focused on binge drinking, had some advice:

Pediatrician Patricia Kokotailo, director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on alcohol use by youth and adolescents, says parents should: […]

• Set a firm policy: No alcohol, drugs or tobacco until age 21. Use the new research on the teenage brain to explain that this is about keeping those maturing brains safe and enabling them to keep on maturing. “We now know that the brains of adolescents continue to mature at least into their mid-20s, especially in the frontal cortex and pre-frontal cortex areas which are involved with emotional regulation, planning, organization and inhibition of inappropriate actions,” Kokotailo says. “The immaturity of the adolescent brain confers greater vulnerability to toxic and addictive actions of alcohol.”

Clearly Patricia has never been a teenager or spent much time around them. 21? Sure, that’s the law for alcohol, and it’s a nice idea if young people wait until then, but few will (and they’ll see right through a lecture on adolescent brain development, knowing that it has nothing to do with abstinence — that argument is better served in a discussion about moderation).

Setting a firm policy of 21 merely means that you’ll be the last to know what your children are doing.

Because, quite frankly, the opportunities will be there and young people are going to try things. It’s their job, built in to their DNA and part of their development into adults.

I think back to my own teenage years, and I led a pretty sheltered life in some ways. My parents were strictly against even alcohol use for adults, and certainly they were strongly against tobacco or other drugs, and there was never any alcohol or tobacco in our house. And I had absolutely no interest in them.

Yet, I had my first beer while in high school, provided by other members of a church youth group I was working with on a charitable project. My first cigarette came from one of my first jobs; my first hard alcohol while visiting college as a prospective student; and marijuana and other drugs from friends in college.

Fortunately, my use was careful and moderate, and I never had any problem with any of it. But that came entirely from me, not from the strictures laid upon me by my parents, nor from any real knowledge. And yes, I made damned sure my parents didn’t know what I was doing.

For a mature and responsible approach to parents talking to their youth about drugs and alcohol, read this letter from Marsha Rosenbaum to her son and his response 8 years later. It’s a powerful lesson.

Feeding young people simplistic messages like “Just say no,” or “nothing until you’re 21,” is much like abstinence-based sex education — a dangerous fantasy. You can wish that your child will remain innocent until they are an adult, but turning that into how you parent can result in tragedy when the young person inevitably fails to wait, and now isn’t well-enough informed.

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This means even more to me know because of my current project: I’m the music director for our production of the Broadway musical “Spring Awakening,” which opens next week.

The musical is based on an 1851 play by Frank Wedekind (which was banned for 100 years) about the sexual awakening of teenagers, and it deals with a host of very frank issues. The adults in the play (all the male adults played by one actor and all the female adults by one actress) wish to maintain strict control over their charges, while the young people are desparate to know more.

In an early scene, young Wendla, who no longer believes in the stork, asks her mother how babies come to be. The parent, flabbergasted by such frankness, finally gives her this:

For a woman to bear a child, she must… in her own personal way, she must… love her husband. Love him, as she can love only him. Only him… she must love — with her whole… heart.

There. Now you know everything.

Ultimately, that lack of parenting leads to tragedy.

Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater have taken this powerful (and both humorous and tragic) play and added an amazing folk-rock score that represents the inner monologues of the young people.

I’m conducting and playing both piano and harmonium on stage, with a band including violin, viola, cello, bass (acoustic and electric) two guitars (acoustic and electric) and percussion.

We have an incredible cast (see below), director and design team. If you’re in the vicinity of Central Illinois, I suggest you check it out. It runs September 27 through October 5.

Note: the title of this post is the title of one of the songs in “Spring Awakening,” dealing with young people trying to understand how they fit in the world around them while dealing with their biological urges.

This morning at 10 am Eastern:

Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Witness List

• The Honorable Rand Paul, United States Senator, State of Kentucky
• The Honorable Brett Tolman, Shareholder, Ray Quinney & Nebeker, Salt Lake City, UT
• Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime Initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Austin, TX
• The Honorable Scott Burns, Executive Director, National District Attorneys Association, Alexandria, VA

Note that Scott Burns has been added to the list. He’s likely to be a challenge to the hearing.

Of course, this is an interesting hearing as it focuses on the conservative arguments for sentencing reform. Something that’s good to see in the Senate.

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This is an open thread.

For the most part in this country, we’ve gotten past the moral argument against overall drug legalization, although that still exists. Today, it’s all about addiction. We can’t legalize drugs because they enslave people and cause them to be addicts, and if we legalize drugs their availability will insure that there will be a massive increase in addicts destroying society.

Of course, none of the actual evidence supports that view, yet the logic of drugs as enslaver still dominates.

A good article in the New York Times Science section yesterday: The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts by John Tierney talks about the work of Dr. Carl Hart (with video as well). Hart has been featured in “The House I Live In” and has also written the book “High Price.”

We’ve talked here before about the Rat Park experiments that showed if you provided rats with a positive environment as an alternative to self-administering drugs, they were less inclined to the ravages of addiction.

Hart did the same with human subjects.

“Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted,” said Dr. Hart, an associate professor of psychology. “And the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures.” […]

Yes, he notes, some children were abandoned by crack-addicted parents, but many families in his neighborhood were torn apart before crack — including his own. (He was raised largely by his grandmother.) Yes, his cousins became destitute crack addicts living in a shed, but they’d dropped out of school and had been unemployed long before crack came along.

“There seemed to be at least as many — if not more — cases in which illicit drugs played little or no role than were there situations in which their pharmacological effects seemed to matter,” writes Dr. Hart, now 46. Crack and meth may be especially troublesome in some poor neighborhoods and rural areas, but not because the drugs themselves are so potent. […]

A similar assessment comes from Dr. David Nutt, a British expert on drug abuse. “I have a great deal of sympathy with Carl’s views,” said Dr. Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. “Addiction always has a social element, and this is magnified in societies with little in the way of work or other ways to find fulfillment.”

So why do we keep focusing so much on specific drugs? One reason is convenience: It’s much simpler for politicians and journalists to focus on the evils of a drug than to grapple with the underlying social problems. But Dr. Hart also puts some of the blame on scientists.

“Eighty to 90 percent of people are not negatively affected by drugs, but in the scientific literature nearly 100 percent of the reports are negative,” Dr. Hart said. “There’s a skewed focus on pathology. We scientists know that we get more money if we keep telling Congress that we’re solving this terrible problem. We’ve played a less than honorable role in the war on drugs.”

Fighting marijuana… or reality?, by David Nathan at CNN, is a response to David Frum and really hits this point well

Cannabis is habit forming in a small percentage of users. Marijuana intoxication impairs driving, though the risk is similar to that of drivers with a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, which is well below the federally mandated legal limit of 0.08%.

So why can’t the opposition discuss these problems realistically?

It’s simple: Because the only rational conclusion is that the dangers of pot are not sufficient to warrant its prohibition. Yet those who have an ideological opposition to legalization appear immune to reason.

Immune to reason. Yep. That pretty much says it.

Radley Balko’s latest post is a sobering one in a lot of ways (watch the video).

Various thoughts come to mind afterward.

What a tragedy.

Finally a case where there is some accountability.

Four years? When they go after state-legal marijuana providers with longer sentences?

It’s good that the officer was held to account, but what about the policy?

The drug war makes everything worse.

September 18 at 10:00 am Eastern: “Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences”

Witness List

• The Honorable Rand Paul, United States Senator, State of Kentucky
• The Honorable Brett Tolman, Shareholder, Ray Quinney & Nebeker, Salt Lake City, UT
• Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime Initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Austin, TX

Great OpEd by Bill Piper in the Seattle Times: Guest: Is it time to get rid of the DEA?

THIS year is the 40th anniversary of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Already plagued by scandals, the agency has recently been revealed to be collaborating with the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on unsuspecting Americans. More than 120 groups from across the political spectrum and around the globe have called on Congress to hold hearings on the DEA.

There is no doubt the agency should be reformed. It is also worth asking if it should continue to exist. […]

Once we finally get a good look under the hood, we will surely find a corroded and ineffective collection of parts that very likely need to go.

I can’t tell you how happy I’d be to see the DEA go away. And how good that would be for this country.

Doesn’t exist.

The Concord Monitor seems to think it does. Editorial: The right drug war, and the wrong one

The right drug war, as the appearance of a member of the ultra-violent Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel in U.S. District Court in Concord yesterday demonstrates, is essential and remains under way. Hard drugs, like the ton of cocaine the gang hoped to distribute, destroy lives and fuel crime and corruption. Meanwhile, the wrong drug war, the half-century-long prosecution of people who possess small amounts of marijuana, is winding down, thanks to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is attempting to bring sanity to drug laws that put far too many people behind bars. Both of Holder’s efforts deserve support.

It’s nice to see them realize that the drug war against marijuana users is wrong, but they’re misguided in their approach to the “other drug war.” Why are they having to deal with the Sinaloa cartel? Why is cocaine linked to crime and corruption? Drug war.

The right drug war is also being fought in Manchester, where a raid on an auto repair shop recently led to the arrest of five people and the seizure of 100 grams of heroin, the biggest smack bust in that city’s history. One of the men arrested gave the police a Concord address. The heroin the group planned to sell creates the addicts who are responsible for thefts from homes and cars and other crimes. The right drug war also needs to be fought against the makers and sellers of the drug known as Molly, an amphetamine with hallucinogenic properties. That drug is blamed for the recent deaths of several dance club patrons, including a young woman from Londonderry and a UNH student from Rochester, N.Y. It is drugs like these, which can easily kill the unwary, and hard drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, that deserve to be targets if a war on drugs is conducted.

Again, it’s the drug war that results in dangerous drugs of uncertain purity that can result in death, or in pushing addicts into crime to support their habit.

Yes, the drug war, when used against casual marijuana smokers, is wrong. But it’s not wrong because marijuana is relatively harmless. It’s wrong because the use of a drug war is always harmful, regardless of the drug involved.

Conflicts Between State and Federal Marijuana Laws — follow this link for the live webcast. Also live on C-Span.org.

Today (Tuesday) at 2:30 pm Eastern, 1:30 Central, 11:30 am Pacific.

Please limit comments on this post to discussion of, and reporting on, the hearing and related items.

• Kevin Sabet’s written testimony for the hearing
• Seven Questions the ‘Senate Cannabis Committee’ Should Ask the Obama Administration – good questions!
• Opinion: Be afraid of Big Marijuana – David Frum
• Mark Kleiman’s submitted statement to the committee

If you missed it live, you can watch a replay here.

Diet of quinoa, mushrooms, cocoa kept world’s oldest person alive at 123

U.S. Ant-Drug Czar Says Legalization Won’t Solve the Drug Problem

Yes, Gil, thanks once again for that ridiculous straw man. Legalization is for solving the drug war problem.

The wealthy ‘make mistakes,’ the poor go to jail – interesting reading in the Guardian.