Drug WarRant

Mike Riggs nails it with his description of the love-fest given to the Obama drug war by the Center for American Progress today: How the Obama Administration Plans to Convince Progressives That it Ended the War on Drugs

Step 1: Say that the drug war is over.

Step 2: Convince the largest and most powerful progressive think tank in America to agree with you, invite you to their headquarters, praise you for having “transformed” drug policy in the United States, and pitch you softball questions.

Step 3: Repeat step 1.

Based on an excellent question asked by Scott Morgan and ignored by Kerlikowske, Riggs hits a very important point that I’ve been wanting to talk about (and will soon at some length) …

Here’s the thing: The words “compulsory treatment” may not appear anywhere in the 2012 Drug Control Strategy report, but it’s nevertheless an inherent aspect of Obama’s supposed shift to a public health approach. Every single alternative to incarceration proposed by the Obama administration–from drug courts to prison rehab programs to family doctor-catalyzed interventions–features some form of compulsory addiction treatment. This is the tradeoff Americans will soon be forced to make: Government-mandated counseling instead of jail time.

That Kerlikowske whiffed on this question is incredible. It means that although the Obama administration thinks compulsory treatment is better than jail time, it’s afraid to come out and say that. Let me repeat that: The Obama administration is unwilling to talk publicly about the central plank of its drug policy platform.

Here’s a 1-2 combination that I could really support.

OK, LP… Make this happen.

Yes, it’s our old friend John P. Walters with Legalized Drugs: Dumber Than You May Think

Are the calls for legalization merely superficial​—​silly background noise in the context of more fundamental problems? Does this talk make any difference? Well, suppose someone you know said, “Crack and heroin and meth are great, and I am going to give them to my brothers and sisters, my children and my grandchildren.” If you find that statement absurd, irresponsible, or obscene, then at some level you appreciate that drugs cannot be accepted in civilized society. Those who talk of legalization do not speak about giving drugs to their families, of course; they seem to expect drugs to victimize someone else’s family.

Irresponsible talk of legalization weakens public resolve against use and addiction. It attacks the moral clarity that supports responsible behavior and the strength of key institutions. Talk of legalization today has a real cost to our families and families in other places. The best remedy would be some thoughtful reflection on the drug problem and what we say about it.

I kind of miss the old coot.

Robert Sharpe has a good letter in the Dallas News in response to Kevin Sabet.

Don’t be fooled by Sabet’s vision of a kinder, gentler drug war.

The vast majority of illicit drug users are marijuana smokers, many of whom have turned their lives around by putting down the bottle and picking up the marijuana pipe.

These former alcoholics no longer wake up with debilitating hangovers. They are no longer at risk of drinking themselves to death. Because they have chosen a safer alternative to alcohol, they now lead productive lives.

Yes, some have substance abuse problems stemming from traumatic life experiences. The last thing they need is Big Brother testing their bodily fluids and threatening jail time. Forcing pot smokers to relapse into alcoholism is not a good use of tax dollars.

The drug war is a cultural inquisition, not a public health campaign.

Interesting point.

Thank you Jimmy Kimmel! Jimmy Kimmel Addresses Marijuana Legalization At White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2012

“I would like everyone in this room to raise your hand if you’ve never smoked pot,” Kimmel said.

Few hands went up.

Noting the crowd’s reaction, Kimmel addressed President Barack Obama directly.

“Marijuana is something that real people care about,” Kimmel said.

New York Times editorial: The Human Cost of Zero Tolerance

New York City’s overly zealous marijuana arrests, coupled with the unreliability and porousness of record-keeping, damage the lives of tens of thousands of people a year. The Legislature needs to fix this. It must drop the public-display distinction for marijuana, which invites far too many abuses. It should also press law enforcement officials and the court system to make sure that criminal records are more accurate to start with and that people who are victimized by errors have a plausible way of getting them corrected.

Employers and government agencies also have a responsibility here. They must not rush to their own judgment about minor offenders.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to recognize that zero-tolerance policing is not the panacea his Police Department seems to think it is. The police need to spend more time tracking down serious crime and less on minor offenses. There is nothing minor about a record that can follow people for the rest of their lives.

Who Still Supports the Drug War? by Republican Precinct Committeeman Chris Ladd.

You won’t find a single major political figure willing to discuss a serious, well-considered plan to advance beyond absolute federal prohibition. At the same time, you have to look long and hard to find anyone who genuinely thinks prohibition is a good idea.

In the absence of a real plan to evaluate the public is left in the lurch. Prohibition is feeding monsters. […]

The cost of our inertia is growing. Our fears of broader marijuana use under looser regulation should be tempered by the escalating damage from our current policy. It’s time to find a sensible alternative to prohibition.

An ominous-sounding tweet from CBS and NIDA:

#60Minutes TONIGHT: Dr. Nora Volkow says the effect of drugs on the brain impacts our ability to have free will. http://cbsn.ws/IhLmyd
Retweeted by NIDAnews

That’s the kind of talk that leads to the government saying “Since, by our definition, you no longer have free will, we are free to impose ours on you.”

No thanks.

I’ll take my chances on maintaining my free will against the lure of drugs and McDonald’s arches versus losing my free will to the likes of Nora Volkow.

Houston

The METRO counter-terrorism exercise didn’t round up any terrorists. Instead, 81 officers arrested 14 people, predominantly alleged prostitutes and dope smokers. More problematic for METRO is that it seemed to anger and confuse some of the agency’s riders who weren’t eager to have their bags searched.

The good news? People are starting to really get pissed off.

Californians — it’s time to retire Feinstein. Seriously, vote for anybody but Feinstein. She’s got too much party clout and she’s a dinosaur. She’s probably also extraordinarily corrupt.

Her column today on The Hill is one of the worst things I’ve read in recent days. She actually channels the ghost of Nancy Reagan’s failed drug war slogan.

First, we should once again make anti-drug campaigns a priority. In the early 1980s, former first lady Nancy Reagan coined the now-famous slogan “Just say no” as part of her national anti-drug campaign.

Although her strategy was criticized, she was able to use the White House as a national platform to address these issues.

Next, Congress should refund the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s youth media campaign — the only national media campaign dedicated to reducing youth drug use. Funding for this program was eliminated last year in spite of the fact that 85 percent of teens are aware of the advertising campaign.

This campaign should be provided with the funding it deserves and expanded to make the connection between U.S. drug use and violence in Mexico.

Beau Kilmer, co-director of RAND’s drug policy research center writes in the Wall Street Journal: The Marijuana Exception

He starts out with some good basic truths (marijuana legalization would save arrests, dollars, etc.) and then gets into the “murky” parts.

Here’s one:

Another big unknown is how marijuana legalization would influence alcohol consumption. It is natural to assume that pot would serve as a substitute (higher use would decrease heavy drinking), but it is equally likely that it would be a complement (higher use would increase heavy drinking). The scientific literature on this is inconclusive.

Equally likely? In what possible world is that equally likely? Is it “equally” likely merely because the literature is inconclusive?

Perhaps Kilmer should turn to the study that RAND helped support: Alcohol, Marijuana, and American Youth: The Unintended Effects of Government Regulation, which found a clear substitution effect. There are other studies online as well.

It’s this magical “equally likely” seemingly snatched out of the air that leads him to baselessly speculate:

By the same token, even a small increase in heavy drinking could outweigh any benefits of legalization.

Then he concludes:

One thing is certain. Nothing we do about marijuana would dramatically reduce the harms associated with the larger “war on drugs.” The market for hard drugs is much larger in dollars, in violence and in the number of offenders behind bars. If these are the critical problems, then marijuana legalization is a sideshow, not the main event.

Really? The elimination of 800,000 arrests isn’t a dramatic harm reduction? What about the corruption in law enforcement from marijuana money and seizures? What about the stop and frisk racial harassment in poor neighborhoods that entirely related to marijuana possession?

Sure, we need to get rid of the entire drug war (so marijuana legalization won’t eliminate drug war harms), but marijuana legalization seems to me to have some pretty dramatic social savings and reductions in drug war harm.