Drug WarRant

As I wrote yesterday morning, NIDA has had an agenda that “focuses on prohibition and abstinence, rather than harm reduction and respect of human agency.”

So I was surprised to see this blog post yesterday in NIDA for Teens: Concerts and Drugs: Is There a Way to Reduce the Dangers?

They don’t come out and endorse harm reduction, of course, but they openly discuss it.

… But some music festivals are trying a different approach to reduce the bad experiences for concert-goers determined to get high off of illicit drugs.

“Harm reduction” is an approach that is based on the belief that some people will do risky, dangerous, and sometimes illegal things even if they know that it could hurt them or have an outcome they don’t want. Risky behaviors include things like using drugs, having casual sex, and binge drinking. And examples of unwanted outcomes from these behaviors include getting HIV, pregnant or arrested, or into a drunk-driving accident.

Supporters of harm reduction feel that educating and protecting people about how to reduce unwanted outcomes is more realistic and helpful than educating them on why they shouldn’t do it in the first place. However, others say there should be a “zero tolerance” approach and that by trying reduce harm from using drugs, you are encouraging drug use.

And they conclude the post by asking…

What do you think? Will harm-reduction programs at concerts help people make smarter decisions about their health, or encourage risky behavior?

Again, in a sane world, NIDA would be actively promoting harm reduction. But in ours, it’s a breath of fresh air just to see them acknowledge its existence.

I noticed this call for papers from NIDA:

Harnessing Insights from other Disciplines to Advance Drug Abuse and Addiction Research

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is seeking submission of ideas from the general public on how to leverage specialized knowledge, methods, and tools from other disciplines to inform new directions in drug use and addiction research. NIDA aims to gain insights into new methods or approaches that could transform discovery in order to expand our basic understanding of drug use and addiction processes, accelerate the development of novel and more effective prevention and treatment strategies, and/or enhance our capacity to implement and improve upon evidence-based interventions.

NIDA plans to award $25,000 in total prizes for white papers that describe ideas.
This challenge is being issued as part of NIDA’s strategic planning process for 2016-2020. Winning proposals may be used to guide the development of new research programs within NIDA.

Key Dates:
Submission Period begins May 26, 2015, 9:00 a.m., EST.
Submission Period ends June 30, 2015, 11:59 p.m., EST.
Judging Period begins July 1, 2015 and ends July 24, 2015.
Winners Announced August 6, 2015.

Of course, the real problem here is that NIDA is only interested in pursuing its agenda – one which focuses on prohibition and abstinence, rather than harm reduction and respect of human agency. In a sane world, a request for submission like this from a government agency would be be evidence of good scientific approach, rather than generating cynicism as to their actual motives.

Still, it seems that it would be good for them to get some real submissions from the public that could lead them to better approaches, even if they aren’t likely to accept them.

Thought for the day:

Prohibition is not a victimless crime.

The House voted on a number of amendments yesterday regarding marijuana and the states. This is another sign of how far we’ve come. Reform in the federal legislature is generally the slowest.

Tom Angell from Marijuana Majority sent me some details on the votes:

• The one to protect state medical marijuana laws — sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Sam Farr (D-CA) — passed by a vote of 242-186. (A huge jump from last year, when we won 219-189.)
• The one to protect all state marijuana laws, including full legalization — sponsored by Reps. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) — narrowly lost by a vote of 206-222.
• The one to protect state industrial hemp laws — sponsored by Reps. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) — passed by a vote of 282-146. (A significant jump in support from last year’s vote of 235-170.)
• The one to protect limited state laws allowing use of CBD oil by children suffering from severe seizure disorders — sponsored by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) — passed by a vote of 297-130.

Tom says:

“Now that the House has gone on record with strong bipartisan votes for two years in a row to oppose using federal funds to interfere with state medical marijuana laws, it’s time for Congress to take up comprehensive legislation to actually change federal law. That’s what a growing majority of Americans wants, and these votes show that lawmakers are on board as well. Congress clearly wants to stop the the Justice Department from spending money to impose failed marijuana prohibition policies onto states, so there’s absolutely no reason those policies themselves should remain on the lawbooks any longer.”

The House also passed (by voice vote), several amendments that would take $23 million from the DEA and put it toward other needs.

I’ll be in New York from June 1-8, hosting a group of 98 people for a week of theatre and walking tours. That’ll probably keep me a little busy.

I’ll be seeing “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time,” “Finding Neverland,” “The Audience,” “Something Rotten,” “Skylight,” “Wolf Hall, parts one and two,” ” and “Hand to God.”

Experts Unearth 2,400-Year-Old Solid Gold Bongs In Southern Russia

Among the items were a pair of gold vessels in the shape of a bucket, and they were placed upside down in the chamber. In addition to the vessels, there were three cups, a bracelet, a finger ring and two neck rings, all of which were made of gold. In total, the well-preserved artifacts weighed almost seven pounds.

Belinski requested from criminologists to analyze the black residue that was found within the gold vessels. The results revealed that the residue was that of cannabis and opium, confirming accounts written by Herodotus of the drug-based activities of the Scythians.

Johann Hari, author of the outstanding “Chasing the Scream,” which you absolutely should read, continues to get the word out about the failures of our drug war through a large number of interviews and articles.

His latest: Tragedy of Whitney Houston and Her Daughter: The Suprising Factora That Can Make People 4600 Percent More Prone to Addiction

Of course, most of our national discussion on addiction has been hijacked by Nora Volkow and NIDA, whose agenda boils down to “drugs are bad.” They promote the brain disease model of addiction which is essentially presented by them in the following manner:

1. Drugs cause brain disease
2. Anyone who uses drugs will probably get this disease
3. Nobody should use drugs

And this supposedly justifies prohibition.

Of course, even if the NIDA model were true, it wouldn’t justify the sledge hammer approach of prohibition, which doesn’t actually address the problems of addiction but causes all sorts of other problems.

And the brain-disease-directly-caused-by-drugs model is also braid dead, since the large majority of drug users never become addicted.

But, of course, the science already exists to explain the majority of addiction. The problem is that the answers don’t support prohibition and are thus unpopular with agencies like NIDA who exist to serve prohibition.

We know the major reason why addiction is transmitted through families – and it is not what most of us think. There is a genetic factor; but there is another explanation that is even more significant – and that we can do something about. A major study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente (4) of 17,000 people has unlocked this – and its results have subsequently been replicated by over 20 studies funded by individual US states.(5) […]

“A person who experienced any six or more of the categories” of childhood trauma, Dr Felitti tells me, “was 4600 percent more likely to become an IV [injecting] drug user later in life than a person who experienced none of them.” (6) He adds: “I remember the epidemologists at the CDC told me those were numbers a magnitude of which they see once in a career. You read the latest cancer scare of the week in the newspaper and something causes an increase of 30 percent in breast or prostate cancer and everybody goes nuts – and here, we’re talking 4600 percent.”

The published research showed that for every category of trauma that happens to a child, they are two to four times more like to grow up to be an addict – and multiple traumas produced a massive risk.

In these instances, drugs are more a symptom than a cause of addiction, and to attempt to “treat” drug addiction by merely attempting to eliminate drugs, doesn’t address the problem.

Today, we have a criminal justice system that takes people who are addicted because they endured trauma, and we traumatize them more. […] Dr Gabor Mate, one of the leading experts on this question, told me: “If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I’d design exactly the system that we have right now.”

Dr Mate – after years of treating patients who became addicts after hellish abuse – has outlined an alternative. Imagine if we had taken the $1 trillion that has been spent so far on the failed drug war (11), and had spent it on the collapsing services designed to protect abused children instead. Every year there are 686,000 kids who have been identified as abused or neglected in the US – and the services for them are appalling. (12) We are setting up a generation of new addicts – and then we will squander more money punishing them. If we spent the drug war money on turning this around, there would, this evidence suggests, be a genuine and substantial fall in addiction.

The more we study, and the more we learn, the more we understand just how warped and counterproductive our drug policies have been.

Very nice column by Neil Franklin, executive director of LEAP. This is Your Neighborhood on the Drug War

Few people discussing the recent riots and protests in Baltimore have bothered to question why young people would feel angry enough to destroy their own neighborhood. Some have suggested the unrest can be blamed largely on the “breakdown” of the family structure in poor neighborhoods, particularly in poor communities of color, where fathers are frequently absent.

What that suggestion fails to address is why the family structure would be breaking down in the first place. The long and short answer is: The Drug War is tearing these families apart. People who suffer from addictions in poor neighborhoods don’t have access to the kind of treatment options that middle and upper class families do, meaning parents with addictions are less able to be breadwinners and look after their children. These neighborhoods also have markedly fewer job openings, and feeding oneself and their family doesn’t become any less imperative when you’re poor, so selling drugs may be the easiest way to keep everyone fed and a roof overhead, however minimally. […]

Many police departments across the country have unwittingly played into a system of racial prejudice that has unfairly targeted communities of color for drug crimes for decades. There are more black men in the penal system now than there were slaves in 1850, yet we’re bewildered that anyone might get angry enough to burn down pharmacies or smash police cars after finding out yet another unarmed member of their community has died in police custody. […]

Cops are public servants who should be helping victims of violent crimes get justice. Prohibition has only created more violence and made neighborhoods more dangerous. Legalize and regulate drugs from a public health perspective, and put our cops back in charge of solving the nearly 40% of murders and 60% of rape cases that go unsolved.

Each time there’s a tragedy in our city neighborhoods, people are ready to blame the citizen, the cop, the jury, etc., but it’s important that they look at the larger picture — what fosters and fuels situations where such disfunction in our criminal justice system occurs. And one of the biggest offenders is the drug war.

In weird news… Man Asks City To Ban Fart Smells — For A Good Reason

Last week, the City of Pendleton updated its nuisance ordinances to cover the smell of marijuana, NBC reported at the time. That means that even though recreational marijuana will be legal in Oregon starting in July, a person can be fined up to $500 if someone complains they smell marijuana coming from that person’s property.

In a letter published in the East Oregonian on Thursday, someone who signed his name as Peter Walters merely asked that council members take the next logical step and start regulating a far more noxious scent:

It was with great relief Thursday when I read in the East Oregonian that Pendleton’s city council took the time to pass an amendment to the city’s nuisance ordinance banning marijuana odor. Clearly, there has been no issue of greater importance facing the city. Now that this important work has been completed I hope that the council will move on to restricting the other offensive smell that plagues our community: farts.

Walters, who is pretty clearly mocking the marijuana ordinance, notes, “Some habitual farters argue that they need to fart for medical reasons but that doesn’t mean my kids should have to smell their farts.”

Nice move by Peter Walters.

I find the whole idea of trying to ban marijuana smells to be absurd. It’s not even that bad of an odor (obviously as a neighbor, you don’t want to be a bad neighbor and inundate people with any odor, but for people to occasionally catch a whiff? No big deal.)

We have dealt with (and still deal with) much worse assaults on the olfactory system. As a kid, I remember that whenever we went to Indiana, we had to roll up the windows and change the car vent to internal only when we got 10 miles from Gary, Indiana, and it was still unbearable. In college, our frequent trips to Cedar Rapids, Iowa were marred by the ever-present smell of the Quaker Oats factory. And have you ever been to Chinatown?

Even now, I smell the neighbors’ fresh-mowed lawns, and that distinct charcoal/lighter fluid combination every weekend, plus the acrid smell of spent fireworks in July and burned leaves in the fall. On one side, I smell cigarettes, and on the other, dog poop.

It’s the smell of freedom.

Can’t guarantee that this was an actual post, but it was too funny not to share.