It’s Monitoring the Future time again. That annual release of the study of teens and drug use, where the ONDCP goes to great lengths to cherry-pick the results to show:
- The drug war is working.
- There are serious problems (not the result of the drug war) that require more drug war.
Smoking marijuana is becoming even more popular among U.S. teens and they have cut down on smoking cigarettes, binge drinking and using methamphetamine, according to a federal survey released Monday. […]
The increase of teens smoking pot is partly because the national debate over medical use of marijuana can make the drugs seem safer to teenagers, researchers said. In addition to marijuana, fewer teens also view prescription drugs and Ecstasy as dangerous, which often means more could use them in the future, said White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.
Ah, yes. It’s our fault.
The “continued erosion in youth attitudes and behavior toward substance abuse should give pause to all parents and policy-makers,” Kerlikowske said.
“These latest data confirm that we must redouble our efforts to implement a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to preventing and treating drug use,” Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in remarks prepared for his Monday speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
Now, let’s take a look at the simple facts.
To me the big story is that high school seniors are now more likely to smoke pot than smoke cigarettes.
Interesting. Cigarettes are legal, yet with legal age restrictions and fact-based education about the harms, we’ve managed to decrease the use of cigarettes.
Marijuana is illegal, and despite turning over all controls to criminals and using lie-based education about the harms, we’ve managed to increase the use of pot.
Wonder if there’s a lesson there, somewhere…
Gil’s right about the national debate on legalization; of course it’s going to get people–including teens–curious, but the real “culprit” here is the web debunking the major pot myths. I’m surprised Gil doesn’t emphasize that, besides pot, all the numbers are moving in the right direction, including the most dangerous behaviors like binge drinking.
“Smoking marijuana is becoming even more popular among U.S. teens and they have cut down on smoking cigarettes, binge drinking and using methamphetamine, according to a federal survey released Monday”
How is this bad news? Which would you rather your teen do?
Smoking dope or smoking a pack of cigarettes a day? Dope is a helluva lot easier to quit, and it doesn’t seem to kill you.
How about binge drinking? I don’t think this one needs much comment.
Meth? Ugh. If they’re doing more dope and less meth, that is a 100% positive development.
No lesson here, move along, give the DEA more money please.
I don’t know how the man holds his head up or even looks anyone in the eye. I couldn’t take his job because I’ve never felt comfortable looking like a fool,but he must be used to it.
I wonder if they give Drug Czars some kind of IQ test or if they just hold a flashlight up to one ear to see if the light goes all the way through? You’d have to have the IQ of an ice cube to take his job with a requirement to lie in the face of all the evidence that has come out against the ONDCP and the DEA in the last nine months,especially with a schedule 1 drug that is quasi legal in 14 states.
This will get real interesting when it’s legal in the first state that has the nuts.
“Marijuana is addictive too people the same way sex is,anything that good needs repeating”
Fat Freddie says”pot will get you through times of no money,better than money will grt you through times of no pot!”
Haha Freak Brothers
Compost powered VW
Don’t go in there man, The shit’s in there man,
lol
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/freewheelin-franklin/poster-art/serigraph/ZZZ002091.html
[Not Fat Freddy…]
Thruth 0
Propaganda 1 bazillion
I also find it funny(not) that banks admit laundring drug money saved them. Humm…amazing how these big cats can come right out and admit this and theres no outrage over it. So the question is, whos selling drugs to the public?
If a product was legal and used in the prescribed way, would it by considered “abuse?” I could say I abuse asprinin, as it’s needed for my heart. If I take one,it’s ok, If I take two, I guess it’s “abuse.” And I abuse brewed Ice Tea each and every day!
The litmus test for any budding politician or career bureaucrat is just how much BS are you willing to swallow and regurgitate on command for a paycheck?
Gill isn’t dumb. He knows which side of the monetary bread the butter’s on. I honestly do not believe that he honestly does believe the verbal scheisse his job requires his to spew. He took the job because ‘it’s good work if you can get it’, as the old saying went.
He’s also demonstrated that by taking this job, he’s a rank opportunist. It may even align itself with his principles….whatever they might be.
But nothing can and nothing ever will stop the inevitable, which is the subject of his p*ssing and moaning, and that is the inexorable march of factual information that counters official propaganda. Nor can the truth’s method of dissemination be checked without the propaganda being brought into checkmate, and that will be the long-awaited national debate.
From the beginning, I had the distinct impression that Gil is a caretaker, someone who’s job will be to ‘turn out the lights’ on drug prohibition. And I believe that way down deep he knows it, but the job, as always, requires a public denial of reality. He’s just there for the time the process allows before his job is made obsolete…or is rendered into something more realistic, such as overseeing harm reduction policies.
The clock is ticking down the time until it stops, and Gill will be ‘punching his ticket’ right to the very end.
Frank had the poster,but the first time I saw the pot phrase,Fat Freddie was helping a grower get rid of his crop,as the cops stopped the growers Cadillac,with a back seat full of cash,F/F jumped out of the car and ran off with a trash bag full of marijuana and that is what he was saying as he left. That may or may not have been the first time the cartoonist used the line,but it is when I first saw it.which means I am older than dirt,and the poster didn’t show up for 2 or 3 years after that.
“evidence-based approach”
Yeah, when are we going to start this Gil ? Dude !
It’s beoming clearer and clearer that it’s impossible to find ONCDP peopoe who appreciate their jobs. Sounds to me like “cancer.” To bad they don’t have Rick Simpson to turn to in their hour of need.
gil simply needs to align both his words and his brain along the following vector: the task is not to eliminate drug *use* — it is to find better ways to deal with the issues of drug *mis* -use.
drug misuse is nowhere as dire a problem as it has been made out to be, and law enforcement is an abominable way to deal with personal health issues.
And who or what tells the ‘CZAR’ what to say? He’s the CZAR! He should be able to say whatever he likes.There must be something bigger than the’CZAR’.Something the’CZAR’ is afraid to cross.Poor little czar.
Hallelujah!
I finally saw an ad over to the side here that wasn’t about rehab.
It is beautiful. It’s “Give a goat”.
I love it!
The federal government has more than 330,000 government employees that make a salary of more than $100,000 per year. Plus benefits. And millionaire pensions. How many are drug warriors?
Looks like they are resorting to the “Don’t mention the war!” argument. Pathetic.
Fawlty Towers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1O41RIKKDo