Drug WarRant

Trudeau calls for legalization of pot

At the end of his five-day B.C. tour, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau spoke out about a well-worn topic in the province: marijuana legislation. Following unprompted remarks in Kelowna Wednesday on the legalization of marijuana, Trudeau told supporters and volunteers on Thursday in Vancouver his thinking had “evolved” when it comes to pot laws.

Could it be that it’s finally reaching the point where it can be politically advantageous to be opposed to criminalization (and that politicians are realizing it)?

He also said:

“Marijuana is not a health food supplement. It’s not great for you. But it’s certainly – as many studies have shown – not worse for you than cigarettes or alcohol.”

Um, well, actually… marijuana is a health food supplement. Parts of the plant have extraordinarily beneficial nutritional value.

Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days.

I’ve been a judge at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Palatine, Illinois. It wraps up today, and this afternoon I’ll be presenting the awards along with the other two judges.

It’s been an excellent Festival with a great selection of independent films this year.

The Pope has made it clear that he’s completely clueless about drug policy, adding just one more data point to the list of the Catholic Church’s embarrassing blunders throughout history (hello, Galileo).

RIO DE JANEIRO – The legalization of drugs will not reduce the problems of addiction, Pope Francis said Wednesday at a hospital in Brazil dedicated to the rehabilitation of drug users.

“A reduction in the spread and influence of drug addiction will not be achieved by a liberalization of drug use, as is currently being proposed in various parts of Latin America,” the Pope said.

“The scourge of drug-trafficking, that favors violence and sows the seeds of suffering and death, requires of society as a whole an act of courage.”

Yes. And that act of courage just happens to be legalization. What did you think it was?

What the Pope does here is simply mouth some non-sequitors and meaningless platitudes, along with using strawman arguments.

He should be embarrassed, but quite frankly, I doubt he’s aware enough.

And so, if his words are followed, the drug trafficking organizations will continue to use violence to get rich and the governments will use violence to go after them and the people stuck in the middle will die.

This would be a good time to remind people to read Radley Balko’s excellent book: “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces

Over at the “Reality-Based Community,” Keith Humphreys has a post: How Legalization Can Expand a Black Market

In it, he claims: “new research from the London School of Economics shows that legalizing prostitution increases, rather than decreases, human trafficking.”

This, he feels, gives him the authority to proclaim:

But in the meantime, wise heads in the policy world will not take it as a given that legalizing something will necessarily shrink the black market.

Wrong.

First of all, the commenters over there have already destroyed the argument by noting at least two major flaws: the lack of accepted global standards regarding the definition of human trafficking; and the fact that the study doesn’t explore methods of regulation.

But let’s go to the study itself.

If Keith had bothered to read the entire article, he would have found the authors note that the study methodology:

…cannot provide a conclusion as to whether legalizing prostitution would result in increased trafficking after legalization.

In order to come up with the conclusions that Keith loved, they had to turn to anecdotal information.

There may be some useful information in the data gathered by this study — but there certainly isn’t any in the way of supported evidence regarding regulated legalization of prostitution and the effect on human trafficking.

…

Keith makes another bone-headed statement in his post:

…demand for prostitution, gambling, drugs and the like is highly elastic. When the demand-suppressing effect of illegality is removed, demand can increase, sometimes dramatically.

Yes, it’s true that when illegality is removed, demand can increase, sometimes dramatically. However, that doesn’t have anything to do with elasticity.

Elasticity is an economic term that measures how much one economic variable affects others (not the effects of something like legalization). People like Humphreys often claim that demand for drugs is highly elastic because it supports their view that if we raise prices we can control use. And they use as evidence articles that show an increase in prices reducing overall use (which is not evidence of whether a commodity is relatively inelastic or relatively elastic, but simply a matter of whether it is elastic at all — which pretty much everything is).

Here’s a brief description of elasticity:

Assume the following:

• If I sell a prime rib dinner at $15, 100 people will buy it.
• If I raise the price to $20, only 60 people will buy it.

This is clearly a situation of relative elasticity. When I raise the price, not only did the numbers buying go down, but they went down so significantly that I go from bringing in $1,500 to only bringing in $1,200.
Instead assume:

• If I sell a lobster dinner at $15, 100 people will buy it.
• If I raise the price to $20, only 90 people will buy it.

This is a situation of relative inelasticity. Sure, the total number of people buying it went down, but now instead of bringing in $1,500, I am actually bringing in $1,800! Most people were willing to pay the increased price, and so I can benefit from raising the price. (That’ll change, of course, if a restaurant down the street offers lobster at $18).

With illegal drugs (and gambling and prostitution), as long as competition isn’t there to drive the price down, or you haven’t maxed out the PED (price elasticity of demand), suppliers can raise the price and people will pay it. Sure, a few will drop out, but enough will pay it to make the suppliers realize an overall increase in revenue, making them stinking rich. They will continue to raise that price until it reaches that maximum.

That is price elasticity of demand in its basic form. (Note, there is also price elasticity of supply as well as other economic functions.)

The junk economics used by Humphreys doesn’t help add any reality to the community.

The media and politicians who were proclaiming that an entire generation of “crack babies” would be nothing but ruined lives must have been… smoking crack.

Of course, we all know that the “crack baby” scare was a complete myth, but it was an extremly powerful one at the time. And the basic idea behind it continues to resurface from time to time, as someone proclaims that another drug is going to cause a generation of zombie babies.

I had not realized that the study of “crack babies” had actually still been continuing until reading this article: ‘Crack baby’ study ends with unexpected but clear result

The study actually followed a group of over 200 low-income families, half of whom had babies while the mother was on crack, and half without drugs being involved. Followed for 23 years.

The researchers consistently found no significant differences between the cocaine-exposed children and the controls.

Someone should make a sci-fi movie, set in the present day, showing the world as it would be if all the scare stories prohibitionists promoted were actually true.

Reminder: I’ll be hosting the FDL Book Salon with Keith Stroup, author of “It’s NORML to Smoke Pot: The 40 Year Fight for Marijuana Smokers’ Rights”

Today (Sunday) 2 pm Pacific, 4 Central, 5 Eastern

Should be fun. Bring your questions.

Link updated.

Obama:

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago. […]

The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Arianna Huffington

Obama: Trayvon “could have been me.” True, and so could many still behind bars for drug possession

Exactly. It could have been him.

ONDCP spokesperson Rafael Lemaitre

POTUS: African American men disproportionately involved in criminal justice system. #DrugPolicyReform

Hmmm, Rafe – I think you missed the key quote. And when is the ONDCP going to stop mouthing empty platitudes (“Drug Czar Kerlikowske: Treat Addiction as Public Health Issue”) and address the real issues?

I thought I’d share with you a post I made for my Facebook friends (who generally aren’t as well-educated on drugs and drug policy as you guys)…

Hey, kids – let’s talk about heroin!

What with celebrities and white suburban kids dying from overdoses in the news, more of you may be interested in this, so I’m going to take a moment to give you some facts and maybe even a tip or two that could save someone’s life.

One of the biggest problems we have is ignorance. I think most of my friends would agree that abstinance-only sex education is a really bad idea. After all, if/when someone fails to abstain, if they don’t know about safe sex, the consequences could be severe, and I don’t believe my friends are the type to enjoy taunting someone with “Ha, ha, you made a mistake. Now die.”

Well, the same is true with drug education — ignorance can kill you if you make a mistake — and yet most of us have come away with drug knowledge roughly equal to “Heroin is bad, mmm-kay?”

I may have sparked your interest with the offer of tips to save someone’s life, so I’m going to lead with those to keep you from getting distracted by the latest inspirational Photoshopped picture further down the feed.

— The miracle heroin-reversal drug: Naloxone.

Seriously. This stuff is amazing. If injected, it will act within one minute to block all the opioid receptors and completely turn off a heroin overdose. And it could last for up to 45 minutes, all without harmful side-effects. It makes someone overdosing instantly sober.

So why don’t you know about this? Because for years, the government rejected calls to increase distribution of Naloxone because they were afraid it would encourage people to do heroin (sound familiar? — similar to objections to condom distribution). So instead, people died. Fortunately, in recent years, they’ve started changing their tune.

If you know someone who uses heroin (or who once used heroin and has “quit”), then you should probably try to score some Naloxone. Even if you don’t know someone personally, if you live in a community where there is heroin use (ie, anywhere), then you should ask whether Naloxone is included in the kits of all early responders. It’s better not to wait until the hospital. Save lives.

— The life-saving Good Samaritan laws

One reason people die is that they don’t get help fast enough. And that may be because people are afraid to get help. You show up with a friend who overdosed and the cops are going to want to run a fine-tooth comb through your life (“Someone has to go to jail.”). In some cases, the person who supplied the drug can be charged with murder. Let’s say I’m overdosing and my girlfriend scored the heroin for me. I’m not going to want her to take me in, lose me, and then spend the rest of her life in prison because of me.

Well, more places are now passing Good Samaritan laws, which essentially state that we’re more interested in saving someone’s life than putting someone in jail (the details vary from law to law). It’s amazing how much opposition there is to these laws, so go to bat for them in your community and your state.

— Rehab – the surprise killer

Yes, rehab can lead to death from heroin overdose. Sound strange? Well, heroin users naturally build up a tolerance, which means they need to increase their dosage (sometimes dramatically) in order to reach the same high. Unfortunately, most of our rehab programs are built on the cold-turkey model, instead of the harm-reduction model. And they often don’t do a good job of educating addicts as to what will happen when they relapse (and most will). Their tolerance level will have gone down after they quit cold-turkey, so that the same dosage that was right for them before rehab now could be enough to kill them.

A lot of people die after going through rehab. If you know someone going into rehab, look into harm reduction models, and also make sure they understand the tolerance factors.

— The drug war makes heroin more dangerous

In a controlled and safe environment, heroin really isn’t that dangerous, and many heroin addicts can lead very long and productive lives. But the drug war puts the purity and safety of drugs in the hands of criminals. Dosages can be very uncertain (leading to overdoses), plus you don’t know what may have been used to cut the drugs. For example, a rogue chemist named Ricardo Valdez created 22 pounds of fentanyl which was used to cut heroin in the U.S.. It directly led to over 1,000 deaths around the country, including 300 in the Detroit area alone.

Our lock-em-up approach not only hasn’t worked, but it has made heroin more dangerous, and more profitable to criminals, increasing the incentive for them to hook young people.

In Switzerland, they took a different approach — give it away for free. Yes, they gave away free, controlled, safe doses of heroin to addicts in a clean clinic with doctors and social workers. They did a study in conjunction with this program and found a 94% reduction in criminal activity by those in the program; addicts were living longer; once stabilized they had an easier time kicking the drug; and… they made it unprofitable to be a criminal heroin dealer, so fewer young people were starting!

Changing our drug laws will save lives.

…

Oh, and finally… don’t do heroin, mmm-kay?

… the more you know.

Mark Kleiman has a post up: Why I always put “medical marijuana” in scare quotes. It’s a masterpiece of muddled confusion.

He accepts in the first sentence that “marijuana has medical value.” That should be enough right there to stop him from using scare quotes. After all, he is a public policy writer and has to know that using the scare quotes is, in essence, a strong implication that he doesn’t believe marijuana has medical value. He essentially admits that his scare quotes are a lie.

What appears to bother him is the ickiness of the system. He admits that politics is a messy business (“laws and sausages”) and agrees that the outcome was good. But he doesn’t like the fact that so many people, who don’t really need marijuana for the strict medical purposes intended in the law, are buying their recreational pot from nice clean medical marijuana sources instead of from the usual street criminals. And what really sets him off is that they seem to be… flaunting it.

Of course, this also fits in Kleiman’s ongoing narrative of being disgusted with both sides (criminalizers and legalizers). And sure, there are people who think that legalizers’ interest in medical marijuana is disingenuous, since their main purpose is recreational legalization.

This is, perhaps then, a good time to remind folks about the most glaring difference between those who have been pushing for legalization, and those who try to defend criminalization.

Yes, many legalizers came to the issue without much knowledge about the medical benefits of marijuana. And yes, they discovered that medical marijuana was also good for the legalization movement. They realized that the mass public would be less likely to be scared by a product that was used by grandmothers with cancer, which could defang the decades of government propaganda. And so they learned more about medical marijuana. And, lo and behold, they discovered it was really true. And they met inspirational people whose illness was transformed by using medical marijuana. And so they became legalizers who also cared about medical marijuana. It was not incompatible at all. Sure, they were “using” medical marijuana as a foot in the door for legalization, but only because that was the best way to also insure that sick people would be able to get their medicine. [Note: I do not give permission to quote the previous sentence without including the entire sentence.] If you talked to most legalizers, they would prefer that marijuana was legalized for everyone, but, failing that, would at least want to make sure that sick people could be helped.

Contrast this with the criminalizers. They also realized that medical marijuana was a foot in the door to legalization, and would neutralize many of the scary lies they had told about it. And so they opposed medical marijuana, despite knowing that it could help people. They were willing to force sick people to be hurt, and even arrest them for trying to get better, all in order to protect a failed political position. Yes, they used sick people. It’s despicable, and there’s no way that you can legitimately compare the two sides’ tactics as being even close to morally equivalent.

This dynamic exists across the spectrum in the legalization vs. criminalization debate.

Someone may come to the legalization discussion originally because they like to smoke pot, and they typed “Why is marijuana illegal?” into a search engine.

At the time, they may not have had any particular knowledge about the connections of race and the drug war. But then they learn about how extraordinarily racist the drug war has been, and because they are real people, this bothers them, and the more they learn, the more they are determined that something must be done about it. In this way, legalization became more urgent to them, because now there was another reason for doing it.

And there is a whole laundry list of reasons why legalizers become more involved and passionate about it the more they learn (and sure, many of them still like to smoke pot and would like to do so legally). Here are just a few of those reasons:

• Medical value to sick people
• Letting farmers grow hemp as another crop if they wish
• Nutritional/energy/fiber values, etc. of the hemp plant
• Racial impact of the drug war
• Corruption (and militarization) of law enforcement
• Civil Liberties
• People dying in Mexico
• Disfunctional foreign policy
• Environmental destruction
• Black-market profits, particularly for violent criminals
• Unregulated quality

etc.

And on each of these issues, legalizers are on the right side. In other words, in each situation, legalization is connected to a better outcome for that issue, whereas criminalization results in a worse outcome.

This is, I think, part of the reason that some people are perplexed by what they may see as an unseemly rabid doggedness on the part of legalizers. After all, why are they so passionate about just wanting to smoke some pot? We care about a whole lot more than that.

So where does that leave Mark Kleiman? After all, he doesn’t like either side, really. He is for a specific limited approach to legalizing marijuana, but [in the larger picture of the entire class of recreational drugs] he is also in favor of maintaining prohibition in order to insure swift penalties for those who are unable to control their drug use.

I think it would be safe to say that he favors the use of government to prevent people from doing what he firmly believes is not in their best interest (and he believes that government can actually do that).

Hey, it’s a cause. Not one I agree with, but he’s at least consistent about that.

And I’ll take my list above, for which I have become passionate through the years of study and learning on the issues, over his cause any day.

[Note: Post updated to reflect unclear writing on my part. The overall bedrock principles of legalization to me hold true regardless of the specific drug (although each of course is different in the way it should be regulated), so I sometimes forget to clarify when I’m talking just about marijuana and when I’m talking about the bigger picture.]

Further update: Mark clarifies his position for the record:

“No, that’s not right. Even for the drugs I’d still like to see prohibited, I’m no longer a believer in user sanctions except for people convicted of non-drug crimes. HOPE and related programs are for property and violent felons, not for drug possessors.”

That’s a good clarification to know.