Drug WarRant

I’m on the road again. Hosting our annual community New York Theatre trip. This time, I have a record-breaking 95 people on this trip, seeing 6 shows as a group, and I’ll be conducting walking tours of the city as usual.

Needless to say, this is likely to keep me pretty busy, and I may not have time for much blogging, but be sure to check out the excellent discussions and links in the comments, and I’ll add a new Open Thread every now and then.

We’ll be seeing “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” with David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver, “Matilda” – the musical based on the Roald Dahl book, the revival of the musical “Pippin,” a new play directed by David Cromer at Lincoln Center: “Nikolai and the Others,” “Kinky Boots” – the musical with music by Cindy Lauper and Harvey Fierstein, and “The Assembled Parties” with Judith Light and Jessica Hecht. I’m’ also going to see “Annie” so I can say Hi to one of our former students, Jane Lynch.

Should be a great week, and I do plan on taking advantage of the restaurants as usual.

http://youtu.be/ru00YQRgXZA

Just in case anyone has forgotten, that is the position of Drug WarRant — legalize and regulate all drugs. Sometimes we end up talking a lot about marijuana, because it’s in the news so much now, but it’s good to remember that the end goal is legalization and regulation. Period.

And that’s the point in an excellent article at LadyBud (back in April that I missed at the time) by Angela Bacca: It’s Time To Legalize All Drugs, Not Just Marijuana

However, for all the reasons marijuana should be legal, almost all of them apply to every illicit substance classified and prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act, all drugs should be legal, all of them. […]

The same arguments used against marijuana prohibition apply to all drugs because the same legislators, government bureaus, private industries and law enforcement organizations profit off them.

Prohibition is the deadliest drug of them all. Yes, Prohibition is a drug. So many layers of society and industry shoot up Drug War cash like smack, they have literally become addicted to the money enforcing arbitrary drug laws generates. Their addiction has incentivized them to turn every American who gets their drugs off the street instead of in a pharmacy as ATMs. […]

In a legal market, more people would survive drug abuse. If all drugs, like food tested by the FDA or tap water monitored for cleanliness and safety, were subject to some sort of oversight, even the incompetent governmental kind, street drugs would be cleaner. Consumers would have legal recourse, like with pharmaceutical companies, to sue producers for selling faulty products. In a legal market, we have the ability to regulate drugs the way we do alcohol, tobacco and in some states, marijuana. With straightforward education, not D.A.R.E., and a legal market we could take the counterculture edge off of drug use and prevent some abusers from ever using. […]

It’s time to push this conversation, the Drug War is not just a war on some people, it’s a war on all people.

Nice.

A lot of people are now talking about Jamen Shively – a name I had not heard before Thursday. Here’s the basics:

A former Microsoft executive plans to create the first U.S. national marijuana brand, with cannabis he hopes to eventually import legally from Mexico, and said he was kicking off his business by acquiring medical pot dispensaries in three U.S. states.

Well, isn’t that special.

It’s an incredible attention getter and has managed to launch him into the spotlight, but as a business plan it makes about as much sense as selling mineral rights on Mars.

If it’s legit, then I see it mostly as a distraction and have very little interest.

The one glimmer in it is the participation of Vicente Fox.

Joining him was former Mexican President Vicente Fox, a longtime Shively acquaintance who has been an advocate of decriminalizing marijuana. Fox said he was there to show his support for Shively’s company but has no financial stake in it.

“What a difference it makes to have Jamen here sitting at my side instead of Chapo Guzman,” said Fox, referring to the fact he would rather see Shively selling marijuana legally than the Mexican drug kingpin selling it illegally. “This is the story that has begun to be written here.”

Now that’s a powerful message.

If that’s Shively’s game (and I certainly have no information that it is), then I could see a very interesting time with him dancing circles around the feds, openly talking about creating big international marijuana business and organizing his “company,” but without actually doing anything, or owning anything, illegal under federal law.

It would leave the feds looking weak, and help the public realize that even big business marijuana is better than big business illegal marijuana that we have now.

That could be fun. But again, it’s too early to tell.

There was one totally gratuitous argument in the article that made absolutely no sense at all.

Washington state’s marijuana consultant, Mark Kleiman, said he was skeptical of Shively’s plans, and feared that the businessman is seeking to profit off others’ addiction.

Really? That’s where you needed to go? Does the consumer have no rights or responsibilities in your universe?

We’ve showcased the outstanding work of cartoonist Stuart McMillan before.

Well, Stuart has a new drug-war-related piece about the Rat Park experiments led by Professor Bruce Alexander who saw the flaw in the research that had seemed to suggest hopeless addiction was inevitable with easy access to drugs.

Particularly if you’re not familiar with the Rat Park story, or would like a refresher, this is a really good read.

Let’s stop wrecking lives over a bag of weed by Paul Zuckerberg in the Washington Post.

In a little office on the third floor of Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW is a small window to the future — open to some, closed to many. This is where you get your D.C. “police clearance.”

If you have never been there, that’s because you have never applied for a job flipping burgers, mowing lawns or cleaning restrooms in the District. Room 3033 is the human resources department for the poor, the young and the disenfranchised. The piece of paper you get there — if you have no criminal record — is what you need to land a job. Without it, you’re out of luck.

For 29 years, I have defended clients facing marijuana charges in the District. At every initial appearance, without fail, the judge admonishes the defendant either to stay in school or to hold down a job. In the majority of cases, however, a job is not possible because most employers in this town will not hire entry-level workers who do not have a police clearance.

What crime is increasingly tripping up those looking for work? Possession of marijuana.

….

By the way, in case you missed it, Mike Riggs at Reason has been doing an outstanding job of demanding accountability from the ONDCP. After last week’s Drug Czar trumpeting of the link between drugs and crime (which was widely ridiculed), Riggs pointed out the conspicuous absence of alcohol data, resulting in an astounding series of dance steps by the ONDCP’s communications director on Twitter. Here’s the conclusion: Drug Czar’s Office Explains Why It Omitted Alcohol Data From Drug and Crime Report.

The Global Drug Prohibition Regime: Half a Century of Failed Policymaking?

This is a very good 16-minute video put together by the always excellent Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

The participants of the discussion forum were: Sandeep Chawla, Deputy Executive Director and Director, Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Niamh Eastwood, Executive Director of Release, Martin Jelsma, TNI Drugs and Democracy Programme Coordinator, Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, Director of OSF Global Drug Policy Program, Wolfgang Reinicke, Dean, School of Public Policy, CEU

Very interesting to hear them talk about the implications of the marijuana legalization efforts in the U.S.

That’s the mantra we hear over and over from the apologists for bad policy like Kevin Sabet and Keith Humphreys.

Of course, this argument has so many holes in it you could drive a SWAT team through it.

• Most marijuana cases are handled at the city or state level, not federal local level, so federal prison isn’t relevant [nor is state].
• Possession is an extremely imprecise term. If you possess enough so you don’t have to go to a criminal dealer every week, you’re considered a criminal dealer yourself, and if the small amount you posses happens to have roots attached to it, you’re a kingpin.
• The larger argument that this statement is part of (the status quo just needs some tweaking) assumes that the way to fix a bad law is to simply convince authorities to enforce it less stringently, which is bad policy and ends up turning our justice system into some kind of nationally sanctioned Russian roulette. (Who gets caught and has their life ruined and who gets to be President?)

Additionally, you don’t have to go to jail to have your life ruined, as thousands upon thousands can attest.

Harmandeep Singh Boparai has an outstanding article: America: What’s more harmful, pot use or incarceration? in the Alaska Dispatch.

In it, he talks about lots of real life people where a simple arrest with no jail time for marijuana possession has callously and thoughtlessly ruined lives.

Definitely worth reading. Preferably by those who mindlessly chant the title to this blog post.

A couple of days ago, I tweeted the following:

.@RafaelONDCP @ONDCP @KevinSabet What do you propose for majority of non-problematic marijuana users? Arrest? Mandatory treatment? Other?

Naturally, I got no response.

And this is one of the most glaring problems with the third-way-ers. Sure, the notion of treatment instead of jail for those who need treatment is a good one. But that doesn’t let you off the hook for the vast majority who don’t need treatment and who are damaged by arrest more than the drug use.

You seem to want us to believe that your policy talents are so limited that you are incapable of crafting policy and law that is narrowly tailored.

Well, then, step aside and let some people take over who can.

…

Note: Just as a reminder, this post is only talking about the demand side. The third-way-ers also have a huge blind spot when it comes to the supply-side devastation we face throughout the world.

It was just a few days ago that I put forth my Open letter to marijuana prohibitionists and so-called third-way-ers and said:

Correlation and Causation are two different words.

Get this one right. There are millions of people who use and have used marijuana, so there’s bound to be some strong correlations out there. Correlations are interesting, and may be a reason to do further study, but generally, they are not, of themselves, a reason to act.

For example, marijuana use has been linked to Nobel Prizes, the U.S. Presidency, and Olympic Gold Medals. That doesn’t mean that marijuana use is going to cause you to get any of those things.

But yesterday, all over twitter and the media, the drug czar and his assistants havee been screaming at the top of their lungs about the link between drugs and crime.

In the manner typical of the ONDCP, they talk about it in such a way as to strongly imply causation, pushing the media to act as their patsies (and there are still a few who are happy to do so).

Mike Riggs does a good job of responding with Drug Czar Report on Crime and Drug Use Is Really a Report About Being Poor and Getting Caught

WASHINGTON — Marijuana is the drug most often linked to crime in the United States, the U.S. drug czar said Thursday, dismissing calls for legalization as a “bumper-sticker approach” that should be avoided.

Gil Kerlikowske, the White House director of national drug-control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime. Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, Calif., last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug. Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested.

We’re going to see versions of this story everywhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw most of them written up the way McClatchy’s was, which is to say, without any indication that reporter Rob Hotakainen actually read the 2012 Annual Report on the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program II (or ADAM II in ONDCP shorthand), which is 122 pages long–far too long for Hotakainen to have examined it before firing off a dispatch about Kerlikowske’s speech. And yet, reading the report is the only way to tell whether Kerlikowske is spinning the results. (He is.)

It was interesting seeing communications director Raphael LeMaitre on Twitter promoting the drug/crime link, but he wasn’t getting away with it there.

Still, you can bet that we’re going to continue to get this kind of activity from the Drug Czar. Anything (including blatantly dishonest implying) to get the public worried about legalization. “Look — drugs and crime!”

Marijuana: The Next Diabetes Drug?”

Toking up may help marijuana users to stay slim and lower their risk of developing diabetes, according to the latest study, which suggests that cannabis compounds may help in controlling blood sugar.

Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not

Retro Report tells the story of the epidemic that wasn’t through firsthand accounts by some of those at the center of things: the researcher who put out the alarm, a pediatric expert who originally cast doubt on his findings and one of the original cocaine-exposed research subjects, a young woman whose life helped disprove the myth of what these infants would become.

Organization of American States launches groundbreaking drug policy report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs

Drug policy reform has been a taboo issue for decades – but for the first time representatives from 34 countries across the Americas have had the courage to break that taboo and envision real alternatives to the war on drugs. It is a clear acknowledgement that the global prohibition has failed to deliver what was promised and that a range of alternatives should be meaningfully explored.

How to Legalize Pot (Bill Keller, NY Times)

The marijuana debate has entered a new stage. Today the most interesting and important question is no longer whether marijuana will be legalized — eventually, bit by bit, it will be — but how.

Honduran victims of US drug war still await justice

One year later, the exact role that the DEA agents played in the deaths of Juana Jackson, Candelaria Trapp Nelson, Emerson Martinez and Hasked Brooks Wood remains unclear. The US government has never conducted an independent investigation into the incident, and has obstructed the Honduran investigation by denying the investigators access to either the ten DEA agents involved or their weapons.

Marijuana By Itself Not a Significant Factor in Fatal and Injury Crashes in 2012

New Times’ findings, based on a records request satisfied by DPS this week, jibe with statistics we reported earlier this month in our feature article about Arizona’s zero-tolerance marijuana-DUI law (link below). Drivers suspected of impairment in crashes that hurt or killed people in Phoenix, Chandler, and Scottsdale were rarely found to be impaired by marijuana, our earlier research showed.

Time to overturn the 1971 drugs law (Richard Branson)

If the war on drugs were a business, we’d have shut it down immediately. Current drug policies are counter-productive, and we need to think seriously about new policies that will deliver good value for money.

Quotable:

If you haven’t got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need.

If you’ve got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need.

— @TomCLloyd