Drug WarRant

From his “blog”

On Veteran’s Day, we take time to honor the brave men and women who defend and protect America’s freedoms. Often times, these service members experience significant mental health and substance abuse issues after returning home from duty. As we reflect on their bravery and sacrifice, we must not forget our commitment to fight for them and ensure they have access to the highest quality medical and treatment support to address these issues.

… as long as it doesn’t involve cannabis.

Art Linkletter, and later Bill Cosby, used to bring small children on and ask them questions. The humor of the show came from the “darndest” things that kids would say.

That’s partially why I like to check out the college editorial pages when they talk about drug policy. Now some can be quite serious and well-informed, particularly if they have a good SSDP chapter there. But there’s always a few that are good for a laugh.

Today we have Staff Writer Shane Smith of The Daily Skiff at Texas Christian University with Legalization of marijuana is a danger to society

Arguments for legalizing marijuana in California were that the drug would help decrease the state’s debt and decrease drug war violence. However, there is no substantial evidence that supports these outrageous claims. [emphasis added]

Well, you see, Shane — we never claimed that “the drug” would help decrease the debt and violence. It’s the change in legal status that makes the difference. No wonder you thought the claims were outrageous (although even “the drug” could probably reduce violence).

Here’s a good one:

By not legalizing marijuana, society is doing its job of protecting individuals from others that take advantage of individual freedoms. If marijuana were legal, we would see people walking around and going to work high on pot. Society has the responsibility of protecting individuals from those who exceed their individual rights. The decline of Prop 19 does exactly that.

That is one of the most bizarre definitions of society’s role that I’ve ever read. And “protecting individuals from others that take advantage of individual freedoms” — I don’t remember reading that in the Constitution.

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, but they should imprison those who take advantage of these rights.

And then Shane turns around completely and torpedoes his own argument:

There is a misconception that making marijuana legal will help the state budget. This is not true at all. The main problem with the argument is that proponents assume that by making marijuana legal, more people will start buying the drug. This is a false assumption. Assumptions like this are dangerous because humans tend to be consistent. Whether or not it is legal, those who smoke pot now will do it again later. Those who do not smoke pot will most likely never smoke the drug even if it were made legal. Marijuana sales would hardly impact the budget in California.

In other words, legalization will have absolutely no impact on marijuana use, but…

The good news is that Californians are smart enough to realize that the legalization of marijuana is dangerous to society.

Shane Smith is a senior secondary education major from Fort Worth.

That’s right. He’s going to be teaching High School.

… if you’re a pharmaceutical company.

It was, of course, fascinating (although unsurprising) how fast Marinol was able to get moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. Marinol is, after all, synthetic THC (or dronabinol) and marketed to function the same as marijuana (although its limitations can be quite severe compared to whole plant cannabis).

Marinol has, interestingly, even marketed itself as “legal marijuana.”

Well now the DEA is concerned that some companies who want to sell “legal marijuana” might have a hard time doing it, so they’ve published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would allow them to open up the definition of Marinol in Schedule 3 to include “Any drug product in hard or soft gelatin capsule form containing natural dronabinol (derived from the cannabis plant) or synthetic dronabinol (produced from synthetic materials).”

After all, they want companies to be able to market alternative versions and generic versions of Marinol…. just so long as it isn’t actually cannabis.

(ii) Any drug product in hard or soft gelatin capsule form containing natural dronabinol (derived from the cannabis
plant) or synthetic dronabinol (produced from synthetic materials) in
sesame oil, for which an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) has been approved by the FDA.

Once again you have the DEA and the FDA working together to make sure that the pharmaceutical companies are taken care of without having to worry about trivialities like proving “accepted medical use.”

When drug products that reference Marinol® receive FDA approval, they will have a currently accepted medical use in the United States.

Actual cannabis, on the other hand, is claimed by the DEA to not have a currently accepted medical use in the United States, despite reams of evidence.

You can comment on the proposed rule making by January 3. Not sure what good it’ll do. Not even sure what comment I’d make… “Yes, please expand the definition because that might eventually lead to…” or “No, don’t let the other drug companies in until cannabis itself gets invited…” Not that the DEA is going to be interested in what I have to say.

I’ve heard about this a couple of places now, but Jacob Sullum does a great job of expressing it:

The ACLU of Pennsylvania recently filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a couple whose newborn baby was kidnapped by Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) because her mother recklessly consumed an “everything” bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts the day before the birth.

This is just another one of those outrages of the drug war. Children are often taken away from their parents just because of the presence of drugs without even the bother of demonstrating harm. And here, a false positive drug test (the test itself was, I believe, unconstitutional) based only on poppy seeds, and they take a newborn from her mother!

I’ve been meaning to post this and now this is the last evening to fill out the survey at JustSayNow.com

Where do we go from here?

Give them your thoughts.

Earlier, some commenters were speculating regarding how many plants you could grow in a 25′ square plot, as allowed in Prop 19.

Well, if you grow them like Kangativa does in Australia, you couldn’t even fit one!

Via Toke of the Town, where we learn that these plants grow up to 18 feet tall and yield up to 10 pounds.

This may be the most incoherent (and utterly stupid) argument against legalization I’ve ever heard, and it was publicly presented by a professional columnist and publisher of a massive internet conglomerate of news and opinion sites who holds a doctorate in American history.

I just don’t know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it’s that I’m getting into my 40s. And maybe I’m a hypocrite. I of course know people who smoke grass. And I don’t have any problem with it. Decriminalized? Yes, I think probably so. But that’s not the same as legalization. It’s very different actually. And let me be clear that I think our drug laws are catastrophic. They create endemic violence first in our major cities and now along the borders and it’s led to generations of Americans rotting in prison. The whole war on drugs is an unmitigated disaster. And the fact that people can’t use marijuana for clear medical reasons is crazy. But do I think it should be like alcohol? Anyone over 18 or 21 can buy it?

I remember, many years ago, talking to my father about the idea of legalization. And bear in mind, my Dad, God bless him, smoked a decent amount of grass in his day, said he didn’t like the idea. One reason is that he was already a bit older by that time. But he had this very contradictory and hard to rationalize position which was that he was fine with people smoking pot but keeping it at least nominally illegal kept public usage in some check. Again, how to rationalize that in traditional civic terms? Not really sure. But frankly, I think I kind of agree.

Wow. That’s just unbelievable. I’ll leave Jacob Sullum to properly fisk the ridiculous statements Josh makes.

What really gets me is that he is so willing to accept the damage caused by prohibition. Does he really not care about those costs? Is he saying that he’s fine with continued prohibition because at least nobody like him (of his class/color/position) is suffering?

I wonder what would happen to Josh if he made a similar statement about abortion, or gay rights…

I just don’t know if I think abortion should be legalized at all. Just decriminalize it. Most women know doctors who will take care of them in secret if they need it, and having the doctors subject to arrest will at least somewhat keep the frequency of abortion in check.

— or —

I just don’t know if I think homosexuality should be legalized at all. I mean I’m fine with two men having sex, but keeping it at least nominally illegal keeps it from being, you know, public. [not real quotes]

He’d be torn apart by the liberal masses.

A question for liberal pundits and politicians: given the widespread and rampant destruction and racism of prohibition, why is it that you are more squeamish about defending a person’s right to ingest a relatively harmless plant, than you are about defending the right to kill babies or the right to stick a penis in someone’s anus?*

…

*obligatory disclaimer before people get upset: That statement was entirely for effect. I am essentially pro-choice and very much pro-gay rights.

Yes, the National Institute on Drug Abuse is hosting Drug Facts Week, November 8-14, which is somewhat akin to the KKK hosting Black History Month. Their partners in this enterprise are: Discovery, MTV, and Partnership for a Drug Free America, plus federal, state, and local agencies.

We’ve talked before about NIDA’s lack of interest in the facts.

Tomorrow is Drug Facts Chat Day. But don’t get excited and think that you’ll be allowed to participate in this chat — you have to be an authorized pre-registered school with a special code.

I’m really looking forward to listening to the winners of The MusiCares® and GRAMMY Foundation’s® Teen Substance Abuse Awareness through Music Contest in Collaboration with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

I haven’t bothered linking to the ton of post-Prop 19 articles out there, but have noticed a positive trend: there has been very little coverage that treats it as a loss to drug policy reform — almost everything is about how Prop 19 energized the discussion, made the “L” word mainstream, and is the first step to at least some kind of reform.

I think the best wrap-up I’ve read is “It’s No Longer a Matter of If, It’s a Matter of When” by Brian Doherty at Reason.

He discusses a fascinating aspect of the lead-in to Prop 19 (I know many here had questioned why some of the top reform organizations were initially on the sidelines…)

When Lee launched 19, most other elements of the drug law reform movement, from NORML to the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) to the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) told him he was picking the wrong year, that he was moving ahead too early.

They eventually came on board after 19 made the ballot, and at the press conference Ethan Nadelmann of the DPA (whose most prominent supporter George Soros came in with a last-minute million dollars for the campaign that helped sponsor a rush of TV ads) admitted that “I was among those who initially tried to discourage Richard from going forward. We said ‘wait until 2012.’…I called Richard a couple of weeks ago to say, ‘Win or lose, you were right. Even if we don’t prevail, the transformation in public dialogue, not just in California but nationally and internationally, has been nothing short of stupendous. The debate over marijuana legalization has been elevated to legitimacy.’”

And now we also have data. As ezrydn and others here in comments have noted, there is a treasure trove of information available about voting for legalization because of this initiative.

Here’s one of the most disturbing and ironic bits of data:

In fact, 67 percent of those who think government is doing too much were anti-19, as were 60 percent of those “angry” at the federal government and 71 percent of Tea Party supporters.

Of course, part of the problem (in addition to the hypocrisy of many so-called “anti-government” voters) is that it is ridiculous to assume that the vast population out there knows as much about drug policy as we do. Thus, misconceptions can actually drive large portions of the voting population, particularly with an issue that is as “new” to them as voting for drug policy reform.

That’s why we have to do the job of educating people. Even one at a time will work, if enough of us are doing it.

The Prop 19 vote has given me a number of opportunities to talk to people about reform who might not otherwise be interested in the conversation. I hope the rest of you are taking advantage of similar opportunities.

Megan McArdle, in the Atlantic, follows up on a conversation (across different blogs) by Andrew Sullivan, Tyler Cowen, Kevin Drum and Ilya Somin regarding whether changing attitudes as people age means that marijuana legalization is doomed. Will Pot Become Legal?

Kevin Drum: I know this won’t be much solace to everyone who worked on Prop 19, but…..this isn’t so bad, really. Given the automatic headwind of getting people to vote Yes on anything, the additional headwind of a big Republican turnout, plus the general nervousness that middle class people have about drugs, a loss this small is actually sort of encouraging. All we need to turn this around in a few years is for 4% of voters to change their minds.

Tyler Cowen: I don’t see marijuana climbing the legalization hill, if it can’t make it through current-day California. We’re seeing the high water mark for pot, as aging demographics do not favor the idea.

Andrew Sullivan: That assumes that today’s younger anti-prohibition generation will get pro-prohibition as they age. But is that true? Maybe having kids changes things, but my experience of ageing boomers is that they’re not anti-pot at all.

Ilya Somin: My tentative conclusion is that it’s probably more of a generational effect. This is not just a difference between the very young and the rest. Rather, each successive age group is much more pro-legalization than those older than them. Even 50–64 year olds were 12 points more favorable to Prop 19 than the over-65s.

Megan McArdle: In my experience, the big dividing line is having kids. […]

Before the pot-smoking parents start crawling out of the woodwork to tell me that I’m totally wrong, that there are lots of parents who support legal marijuana–I’m not saying this happens to every single person who has a kid. But in my experience, as the kids approach the teenage years, a lot of parents do suddenly realize they aren’t that interested in legal marijuana any more, and also, that totally unjust 21-year-old drinking age is probably a very good idea. […]

Maybe we have reached the high-water mark of this sort of personal liberty. As the baby boomers age, they will be less interested in directly exercising their right to smoke pot, which means that even if they still support legalization, they will be less motivated on the issue. […]

There’s no particular reason to think that marijuana legalization belongs to the select few notions that actually live to become settled institutions.

It’s a good discussion, and I think a combination of factors are involved here. Yes, as Megan indicates, some people become mommy-and-daddy monsters when they have kids, and it distorts their previous views on just about everything. And I agree with Ilya that generational factors are clearly at play in political views that carry through life.

One thing missing from this discussion is that we, as a people, are getting smarter (or at least better informed). Because of the efforts of groups like LEAP and SSDP and NORML and SAFER and DPA and Stop the Drug War and MPP, and this blog, and all of you, we’re beginning to actually counter the decades of government propaganda and lies.

While there will still be an aging factor, each successive generation knows more of the truth, and is therefore more likely to support reform.

Sure, many parents will still put their concern about the safety of their children ahead of their previous interests in personal liberty and pot-smoking, but now more and more they’ll realize that ending prohibition is what’s needed to safeguard their young.

Legalization is inevitable in becoming a settled institution, not because a majority of the population will necessarily decide they want to be able to smoke pot, but because the alternative is too destructive to society, and we’ll be there to educate the population so they know that truth.