Drug WarRant

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.

Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show

Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.

Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety.

Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation’s growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.

So with traffic fatalities decreasing dramatically overall, the Drug Czar has been spending a lot of the government’s policy capital making a big deal about “drugged driving,” pushing for “per se” laws that have nothing to do with traffic safety and making evidence-free pronouncements about what appears to be a non-existent epidemic of impaired drivers.

When it comes to fatalities from illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine, prohibition is what’s usually to blame, due to dangerous additives and uncertain purity.

Of course, the biggest increase in fatalities has been from prescription drugs, and, to be fair, the drug czar’s office has been giving this issue a tremendous amount of attention.

However, giving a problem a lot of attention is not the same as good policy, and the ONDCP has been seriously lacking useful policy to help the problem.

Sure, there have been some PR stunts like prescription drug turn-in programs, which probably bring in (helpfully) a lot of useless junk, but are less likely to reduce the availability of OxyContin or Xanax.

Then there’s marijuana, which could in some cases handle the anxiety or pain relief of much more dangerous prescription drugs, but is kept illegal, while pharmaceutical companies push to prescribe their drugs.

Chronic pain is politicized, with too much being under-treated or being pushed under the radar, leaving patients forced to take risky approaches to dealing with pain.

Finally, there isn’t a coherent national approach to harm reduction. Everything is about abstinence outside of prescribed uses, and so there is very little mass education about the specific dangers of dosage and interaction for off-label/recreational/addictive uses.

I’m sure the Drug Czar’s office has a way to paint this data as a complete vindication of everything that they’re doing. It’s about the only thing they’re good at.

The desire for recreational drugs is an ongoing part of human nature, and people will go to great lengths to obtain them, including manufacturing these drugs themselves in their homes.

Of course, governments go all out in their zeal to crush these attempts, from summarily cutting off the power of homes even suspected of using too much electricity, to taking away their children or seizing their home.

Now, in rather startling news, it’s been discovered that the occupants of the White House in Washington, DC have been secretly manufacturing recreational drugs, and even have a staff of specialists to work on it.

Apparently, this has been going on since last January, but they’ve managed to escape discovery so long by sharing with only a select few.

Only special guests have sampled White House homebrew.

As the lights are still on, it appears that the power has not yet been cut to the White House, and no word has been forthcoming from law enforcement and social agencies as to whether Malia Anne and Natasha will be placed in foster homes or whether forfeiture proceedings have begun on the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue property.

Happy Constitution Day.

… so that they have to harass people not only following state law, but even federal law.

Oregon State Police harass Federal medical marijuana patient Elvy Musikka

Early Thursday morning, Oregon State Police detained Elvy Musikka, one of four remaining federal medical marijuana patients, along with other state medical marijuana registry cardholders following a town hall meeting on medical marijuana in the eastern Oregon / Idaho border town of Ontario.

According to Joey Nieves, clinic manager at 45th Parallel, a medical marijuana cardholders co-operative, a state trooper had staked out the co-op to harass cardholders as they left the building. […]

Nieves reports Musikka was detained for over an hour in a squad car as the trooper did not believe Musikka’s federal paperwork entitling her to possess and use her federally-produced medical marijuana anywhere in the United States. […]

Patients on the scene recorded the encounter on video, which has been seized by the state police. […]

An AP reporter was already working on a story about Elvy and in the process of getting the return of Elvy’s prescription and ID, they learned that the state troopers were being ordered by the federal Department of Justice to engage in these seizures from state-legal patients.

President Obama has issued the annual Presidential memorandum where countries are chastised for failing to win our failed war on drugs.

Pursuant to section 706(1) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-228)(FRAA), I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. […]

Pursuant to section 706(2)(A) of the FRAA, I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and take the measures set forth in section 489(a)(1) of the FAA. […]

I have also determined, in accordance with provisions of section 706(3)(A) of the FRAA, that support for programs to aid Bolivia and Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States.

Seems to me that there’s one major drug producing and transit country that isn’t on the list. Big country, perched right on top of Latin America, consumes more illegal drugs than the rest of the world. Wonder how it got left off the list?

Drug WarRant has been a big fan of LEAP member David Bratzer. Well, he is taking a leave from his work as a police officer in Victoria, BC in order to run for School Board Trustee in Victoria.

His campaign theme is “Schools Not Prisons.” It recognizes education as a major factor in determining whether a young person ends up in jail.

The interesting thing is that he is not hiding his involvement with LEAP and his views about the failed war on drugs, but rather making that part of his positive candidacy. Very refreshing.

I’ll keep you updated on his campaign.