Drug WarRant

… but now he’s getting Arne Duncan, the Secretary of the Department of Education, to do it as well.

Deputy Director David K. Mineta announced at the ONDCP “blog” that Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and Secretary Duncan were reaching out to college and university leaders to prevent “illegal drug use” and “high risk drinking.”

Notice that the request is not about “high risk drug and alcohol use.” That would certainly be an appropriate goal. No, it’s really about high risk alcohol use and any marijuana use.

Why? Certainly yes, the government would want universities to not allow illegal drug use. But to specifically target, beyond it’s illegality, extra efforts to stop use in one area and abuse in another?

The answer is in Mineta’s post. The 2011 National Drug Control Strategy includes a goal of “reducing illegal drug use by ten percent within five years.” Not drug abuse. Not problem drug use. Simply drug use. And the only way to get that kind of numbers it to try to go after the non-problematic casual recreational use by young people, particularly if you can get college administrators to help you with enforcement.

So this effort is not a high-minded effort to help college students with real problems, but rather to a large extent a self-serving method of playing with numbers.

So let’s take a look at the letter sent out today by Gil Kerlikowske and Arne Duncan.

A lot of re-stating the key terms…

Illegal drug use and high-risk (binge, heavy, and underage) drinking affect every aspect of society vital to winning the future, including educating our youth and developing a competitive workforce for the new economy. […]

Together with our interagency partners, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Education are working collaboratively to prevent illegal drug use and high-risk drinking in our Nation’s college and university communities.

Then there was some discussion of academic consequences of drinking, followed by this note regarding marijuana:

Additionally, a study found that college students who used marijuana were more likely to put themselves in physical danger when under the influence, experience concentration problems, and miss class.(3)

That interested me, because I hadn’t heard this one before – that college students who got high on marijuana would put themselves in physical danger. What did that mean? It made sense for alcohol use, but marijuana?

So I went through my university library and found the referenced study: (3) Sullivan, M., & Risler, E. (2002). Understanding college alcohol abuse and academic performance: Selecting appropriate intervention strategies. Journal of College Counseling, 5 (2), 114-124.

Not a single mention of marijuana in the entire study. Nothing about stoned students in physical danger or missing classes. The whole thing was about alcohol.

Now, if a student of mine turns in a paper with a falsified citation, it’s not going to help their grade very much.

So how will university presidents grade the Drug Czar and the Secretary of Education for doing it?

…..

Update: Interestingly, there’s a petition at the White House dealing with Drug Czar lies…

Eliminate or Reform Departments whose Officers are Required by Law to Lie to the American People.

In a time of astronomical deficits, departments that are required by law to LIE to the American public should be reformed or eliminated.

The director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), aka “The Drug Czar,” is one such position. […]

Some commenters have been less than thrilled with my admiration for Calderon’s use of the term “market alternatives” as a code for legalization. Sure, in an ideal world, nobody would speak in code, and everybody would understand the full meaning of the word “legalization” and not just its political coloring. And in an ideal world there would be no drug war.

Certainly, I’m no fan of Calderon, and he’s been no friend to drug policy reform. His escalation of the violent war on drugs in Mexico has resulted in thousands of deaths and ensured that the problems that exist will be much harder to solve in the future.

Lots of former heads of state have come out in favor of legalization or some form of decriminalization. Almost none have done it while in office. Yet three times in the last week, President Calderon has suggested that the drug consuming world, if it’s going to keep consuming, needs to look at market alternatives.

There’s no doubt that “market alternatives” in this sense means legalization. When you’re talking about finding an alternative to the black market while not eliminating demand, by definition that is legalization.

I’ve been getting quite a kick out of a number of the mainstream media folks trying to deal with Calderon’s statement without their heads exploding. Some have reported his statement, along with the fact that he failed to actually define “market alternatives,” and then indicating that some analysts have said Calderon may be referring to legalization. At that point in the article you can practically see the hamster running in circles in the reporter’s head as they try to come up with some other possible meaning for “market alternatives” to balance the statement… and realize that there is none.

At this point, I believe that the term “market alternatives” has the capability of forcing an epiphany among some people. I know there are a lot of people out there who have rather lazily just gotten in their head that the entire meaning of “legalization” is something akin to “allowing potheads to smoke dope.” They just haven’t spent as much time thinking about it as we have. These are the same people who don’t realize that regulated legality isn’t an oxymoron.

Calderon’s statement makes them actually come to grips with other, importantly relevant definitions.

The more that these discussions occur, the better. Here’s a nice understanding of the term from Jesse Kline at the National Post

Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.

The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.

Exactly. Market alternatives.

Personally, I’m fighting for legalization. However, I’m happy to talk with people about market alternatives to our current disastrous market policies.

I loved this one:

I’m impressed by your writing. Are you a professional or just very konwledegable?

Thanks for asking, Jenelle. I find konwledeg to be very important, and the research I do helps me to konw lots of things that I can share with you.

…

A question for the tech-savvy… This spam comment, as have many recently, merely had their URL listed as http://www.bing.com. What value do spammers get out of that? I’ve seen the same thing with Google urls. I’m pretty good at catching the ones that slip past the Akismet filter (we get about 2,000 spams a day here), but I really don’t understand this one.

I also get a lot of requests from people who want to pay me for text links, but I know that scam and never accept their money. That’s a clear effort to drive up google rankings. But what do commenters gain from linking to Bing or Google?

Oh, and regarding konwledegable… I’d like to believe that it’s someone who really messed up that word that bad, but the truth is that it’s probably part of an automatic function that sends out millions of spam comments and slightly misspells one of the words in multiple ways to escape notice from spam filters.

Anti-Drug Abuse Message Award

The Jackson County Drug Free Council recently announced that it is sponsoring an award for the Seymour Police Department DARE Soap Box Derby on Sunday on West Second Street.

According to a press release, the award is a Wal-Mart $25 gift card and it will be given to the Soap Box Derby car that sports the best anti-drug abuse message.

The public is invited to participate in the activities.

I’ve got the perfect anti-drug abuse message to put on a soap box car:

Magnetic version to put on your car available in the Drug WarRant CafePress store.

There have been a number of events in the past few years where the public has had an opportunity to put forth their views of what should be changed in government and vote in some way to identify the most important ones.

In every case, some form of legalizing marijuana and/or ending the drug war statement has made it to the top (or even all of the top 10).

Turns out, it’s not just Americans…

Israel: Trajtenberg Committee asked to legalize pot

The highest ranked recommendation to the Trajtenberg Committee, according to the committee’s official website, is that “the legalization of cannabis in Israel is worth over NIS 1 billion ($270 million) a year.”

Of course, in the U.S., when similar results came forward, President Obama decided he didn’t like the answer:

… noting the huge number of questions about marijuana legalization and remarking with a chuckle, “I don’t know what that says about the online audience.”

“The answer is no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,” he said, as the audience in the room applauded and joined him in a laugh.

On the other hand, in Israel, Knesset Member Einat Wilf had an actual coherent response

She argues that “if the Trajtenberg Committee does recommend legalizing cannabis and taxing it accordingly – as many of the readers suggested – it would solve three issues at once: It would have done what’s right from a social perspective – it is clear today following research and on the basis of a recently published international report submitted to the UN that decriminalizing the use of cannabis and making it a social welfare issue yields better results insofar as its use and will limit its harm to society; it would also create another substantial source of income for the government and can be used to implement the committee’s recommendations.

“Furthermore, it would take the money out of the hands of crime families and the enemies of the State. The funds in question are quite substantial and these days, following my request, the Knesset’s research and information center is engaged in the estimation of the figures involved.”

That’s what you do when you ask the public for their concerns and they give them to you.

The U.S. has another opportunity starting today.

The White House has just launched We the People on WhiteHouse.gov, which President Obama says is “giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them.”

The question is whether there is anyone on the other end of that line who is interested in hearing what Americans have to say.

Still, I’m all for creating a petition, and participating in my First Amendment rights and responsibilities.

Seems to me that one petition should essentially be focused on the goal of Barney Frank’s bill HR 2306 Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. In other words, simply get the federal government out of marijuana and let the states figure it out.

Another one might have to do with having a national discussion about different models of legalization and how they might work to reduce the power of the black market. (and that the head-in-the-sand approaches like “legalization is not in our vocabulary” is unacceptable in a science-based discussion.)

What are your thoughts? (And feel free to use the up and down votes in comments to rank ideas.)

Absolutely scathing article in the Village Voice about New York Mayor Bloomberg: Young Men’s Initiative: The White Mayor’s Burden – Bloomberg aims to help the young black and Latino men he has been throwing in jail for a decade

Consider that, according to a study by Professor Harry Levine of Queens College, Giuliani “only” averaged arresting 24,487 people a year for marijuana. By 2008, Bloomberg was averaging 36,069 pot arrests annually.

In 2010, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, he arrested 50,383 people—”more than capacity seating in Yankee Stadium.”

In 2011, he’s on track to arrest more than 60,000 by year’s end.

Now, while you’re still sober, take a wild guess: What color and gender were most of those arrestees? […]

And now it has come out that the most overpoliced, harassed, questionably searched, often illegally arrested New Yorkers are exactly the citizens the mayor suddenly wants to “help.”

His Young Men’s Initiative, which Bloomberg announced last month to great fanfare, will lavish $127 million of public and private funds on young black and Latino men over the final years of the mayor’s tenure.

This is utterly befuddling to his critics, who have fought him over the past decade as he has suspended young black and Latino males in schools, stopped and frisked them on the streets, and locked them up in record numbers.

Via VOCAL New York… The Drug Czar is in New York today, visiting with DA Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. in Washington Heights to discuss their “progress” in fighting the war on drugs.

A group of New Yorkers (members of VOCAL and New Yorkers who believe we need an end to the drug war) are there at this moment protesting the drug czar’s war.

Billionaire Peter Lewis: My War On Drug Laws at Forbes.

It’s become sort of a central philanthropic interest of mine—by no means my only interest. But I’m pretty clear. I’ve thought it through, and I’m trying to accomplish something. My mission is to reduce the penalties for growing, using and selling marijuana. It’s that simple.

I’ve been conducting a great deal of research on public opinion on marijuana. Change in this area is inevitable, much like the movement toward equal rights for gays and lesbians. An ever shrinking fraction of the country resists changing marijuana laws, largely for moral reasons. But change is coming. It’s just a question of when and how we get there.

The L.A. Times reports on a new RAND Corp study.

Medical marijuana dispensaries — with storerooms of high-priced weed, registers brimming with cash and some clientele more interested in getting high than getting well — are often seen as magnets for crime, a perception deepened by a few high-profile murders.

But a report from the Rand Corp. reaches a startling conclusion: The opposite appears to be true.

In a study of crime near Los Angeles dispensaries — which the investigators call the most rigorous independent examination of its kind — the Santa Monica-based think tank found that crime actually increased near hundreds of pot shops after they were required to close last summer.

“What I would take away from it is maybe there should just be a little bit less fear about having dispensaries,” said Mireille Jacobson, a health economist who was the lead researcher. “Hopefully, this injects a little bit of science into the discussion.”

Of course, this should be freakin’ obvious, and certainly not the “startling conclusion” of writer John Hoeffel, despite the limited data used by RAND.

Yes, there are those with an anti-pot agenda who have tried to, without any real evidence, paint pot dispensaries as crime magnets, but nothing supports that, including common sense.

• Dispensaries have significant security, including cameras, that actually add to the safety of their surrounding area.
• People who buy medical marijuana (even people who don’t really need it, are less likely to be violent or combative as those who buy alcohol.
• When there is no dispensary, marijuana sales are controlled by competing criminals on the street – more likely to result in crime.

Of course, it would be even better if you eliminated the tiered system of medical marijuana and simply had pot available for sale like cigarettes, shutting down almost all criminal connections.

Note: There was an earlier AP version of this story yesterday, which appeared to be quickly scrubbed from papers, and I was trying to track down the study to see if it really exists, but now it shows up on the RAND site. Here’s the full report from RAND.

The first time he said it, I picked up on it and it was later covered by Time Magazine. Now he’s repeated it, this time in a speech to the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in New York (picked up by Reuters).

“We are living in the same building. And our neighbour is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. And everybody wants to sell him drugs through our doors and our windows,” he said.

“We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs,” Calderon added. “But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions — including market alternatives — in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations.”

He did not go into more detail, but the remarks appeared to be a softening of Calderon’s attitude towards state regulation of the market for drugs, which could curb the power of the cartels by taking away their profits.

Now it’s got legs. CBS Early Show realizes the news value and tries to get him to talk. Note how Calderon refuses to be drawn in to say the word, but rather leaves it to the U.S. to define the obvious need for “market alternatives.”

Early Show: “And you said ‘if drug consumption can’t be limited here, decision-makers must seek more solutions.’ You talk about ‘market alternatives.’ Are you talking about legalizing drugs?”

Calderon: “I’m talking about market alternatives, market solutions; the point is the astronomical […] that the criminals have, come from the consumption in the United States, that must be addressed. And my point is, either we reduce consumption, or we need more alternatives, more solutions, to at least analyze, and among them, of course, we need to include the market alternatives.”

In other words, “I didn’t say ‘legalization.’ You said ‘legalization.’ If you’ve got some other alternative to the black market, then fine, bring it forward, but there has to be an alternative.”

Again, I disagree completely with Calderon’s militarization of the drug war in Mexico, but I do admire this “market alternatives” approach. He’d get dismissed immediately if he used the L word, but with “market alternatives” he forces others to define it and got CBS to say it.

Update: To clarify, I do not mean that people shouldn’t use the ‘L’ word. They should. Merely that for Calderon’s particular personal situation, the “market alternatives” line is useful.

Police made 853,838 arrests in 2010 for marijuana-related offenses, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. […]

Overall, law enforcement agents nationwide arrested 1,638,846 people last year for drug abuse violations, surpassing arrests for all other crimes.

Since 2000, law enforcement have reported making an estimated 7.9 million arrests for marijuana violations.

Here is the full report.

Of course, this puts the lie to the Drug Czar’s claims that the war on drugs is over, and his insistence that:

“As someone who has spent their entire career in law enforcement, I know we cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem.” NSDUH, September 8, 2011

“History has taught both of our nations that we must support robust and comprehensive drug policies which recognize we cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem” Meeting with Sweden, March 21, 2011

“We can’t arrest our way out of this situation,” Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske told a crowd at the University of Charleston on Friday. West Virginia, February 25, 2011

“I will tell you what it should be. And they talked about it often. And that is, we are not going to arrest our way out of this situation, that we need to be, not soft on drugs or soft on crime, but we need to be smart on drugs.” PBS, December, 2010

“Director Ivanov recognizes that a balanced strategy within Russia is as important as we recognize here within the United States, that just as I’ve heard quoted in the Russian press that we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem in that country, we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem in the United States.” May 12, 2010

“We can’t arrest our way out of the situation,” Kerlikowske said. “What we’re doing now just isn’t sustainable.” Pasadena, March 1, 2010

… You get the idea. He even said it before he got the job!

“Chief Kerlikowske has readily acknowledged that we can’t ‘arrest our way out’ of these challenges and that new responses are needed.” February 11, 2009

You can say it all you want, Gil (in fact, google results for “kerlikowse” and “arrest our way” yields thousands of results), and you can claim that you’ve ended the war on drugs, and you can claim that you’re pursuing a balanced approach, but the truth is that you are part of a system that is arresting 1.6 million people a year for drug offenses.

One of the truly bizarre arguments that prohibitionists often use is that not that many people are in prison for drug possession (or marijuana possession) and so therefore I guess we shouldn’t be so upset or something (I’ve never really understood the argument).

Of course, it’s a lie. There are many people in prison for possession. But it’s also a lie because it pretends that federal prison is the only significant penalty for our enforcement-heavy drug policy. A “mere” drug arrest (as over 1.6 million people experience each year) for many can mean the loss of their job, their career, their pension, their savings, or their family.

I may not agree with much of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ politics, but I really do enjoy his independence and spunk when it comes to the war on drugs.

Bolivia’s Morales asks bloc to condemn US on drugs

HAVANA—Bolivian President Evo Morales said Monday that a regional South American bloc should “decertify” the U.S. in its counternarcotics efforts, hitting back at Washington’s criticism of his South American nation on drugs.

Speaking in Cuba while receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Havana, Morales accused the United States of being the root cause of the international drug trade as a leading consumer of cocaine.

“If the United States can certify or decertify, why can’t UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) decertify the United States if the origin of drug trafficking is U.S. consumption of cocaine?” Morales said.

Why not, indeed. It would be merely symbolic, but why not send the message that the U.S. doesn’t own international drug policy.