Drug WarRant

Paul Armentano catches this incredible performance by the Director of the National Institutes of Health: Health Czar Shows Amazing Ignorance About Marijuana

“We don’t know a lot about the things we wish we did,” with respect to the herb, Collins said, seemingly unaware that a keyword search of the agency’s own sponsored website would yield thousands of scientific papers specific to marijuana and its behavioral and health effects. “I’ve been asked repeatedly, does regular marijuana smoking, because you inhale deeply, increase your risk of lung cancer? We don’t know. Nobody’s done that study.”

Nobody’s done that study?

Wow.

That seems to be the message that’s coming here: US softens –
Hints at ways Ja could avoid punitive measures for ganja

Instead of belching fire and brimstone, the Obama Administration yesterday appeared to be treading softly on Jamaica’s plans to decriminalise ganja.

A key US narcotic agency also hinted at ways the island could avoid punitive measures under US federal law that remain on the books, as the administration turns a blind eye to the quickly growing number of US states that have been decriminalising or legalising marijuana.

In separate statements responding to Jamaica Observer queries, both the State Department and the Department of Justice sidestepped direct comment on how the US would react to decriminalisation of the weed.

“The US respects that different nations have varying approaches on the matter; it is the duty of each nation to determine drug policies that meet its specific needs within the framework of International Laws,” the State Department said in its response.

Not a full-throated approval, of course. But merely to be that… respectful… in this area is a huge shift.

Interesting. The INCB must be throwing a fit right now.

California cities, police chiefs support pot regulation for the first time

Yep. After years of actively and criminally resisting the will of the voters, these groups are asking for a seat at the table of regulating marijuana. Because they’ve finally seen the light? No, because they’re afraid of becoming irrelevant.

California cities and police were long considered obstructionists to regulatory legislation they said would legitimize marijuana businesses. But now they are jumping into the marijuana-regulation effort out of fear that the state is inevitably moving toward a sanctioned cannabis industry with or without their input. […]

“Our two organizations independently came to realize that although we remain strongly opposed to marijuana use, it is increasingly likely that in the near future some statewide regulatory structure for medical marijuana could be enacted,” Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities, and Covina Police Chief Kim Raney, president of the chiefs association, declared in a recent joint letter.

“We also realized that without our proactive intervention, it could take a form that was severely damaging to our interests.”

No, they haven’t really changed. But it’s nice to know we’ve come so far that our opponents have to try to infiltrate reform in order to get what they want.

Update:

For more of the sense historically how these organizations have opposed working in a reasonable manner and how they have really not been interested in being a real part of the solution, check out this article from January: California police have no interest in setting pot rules

In 2010, as Colorado lawmakers were creating America’s first state-licensed and regulated medical marijuana industry, fellow police officers at a Colorado Drug Investigators Association conference jeered a state law enforcement official assigned to draft the legislation.

Some of the sharpest barbs came from visiting narcotics officers from California. […]

Training seminars offered for police by the California Narcotic Officers’ Association suggest there is no such thing as medical marijuana and that state voters were hoodwinked into approving its use so people could legally get stoned.

“The general feeling in the law enforcement community is that California’s medical marijuana law is a giant con job,” said John Lovell, a lobbyist for narcotics officers, police chiefs and correctional supervisors. Lovell has led opposition to medical marijuana regulations, saying existing dispensaries in California are “a corrosive presence in the community” and authorities are unwilling to legitimize “free-standing pot shops” that he says attract crime and expand neighborhood availability of marijuana.[…]

But instructional materials for a certified police officer training program offered by the California Narcotic Officers’ Association declare that “this ‘medical marijuana thing’ ” is “an epidemic that is infecting our society.” […]

[Chief Raney] charges that cannabis advocates are unwilling to consider law enforcement’s concerns.

“I have not found those people credible to sit and talk with,” he said. [emphasis added]

I had a nice one-on-one interview with a High School student (set up by his teacher) who is doing a project on drug policy reform for a sociology class. It was really great to see his passion and enthusiasm for learning more about the subject.

He was light years ahead of what I knew at his age.

When I was in High School there was hardly the possibility of having access to information on drug policy, let alone writing about reform. So while it still may be taboo to some to talk about legalization in High School (as my interviewer mentioned), we’ve come a long way.

As long as there are young people who want to know more, we’ll be there to help give them the facts.

(Oh, and when you finish with that project, if you want to stop by and let us know how it went, we’d love to hear.)

Gupta: ‘I am doubling down’ on medical marijuana

I am more convinced than ever that it is irresponsible to not provide the best care we can, care that often may involve marijuana.

I am not backing down on medical marijuana; I am doubling down. […]

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, defined as “the most dangerous” drugs “with no currently accepted medical use.”

Neither of those statements has ever been factual. […]

Terms matter, too.

We are talking about a medicine, known scientifically as cannabis. In order for people to start thinking of this substance as a medicine, perhaps we should start calling it by its medical name, something that was suggested to me by medical marijuana advocates pretty much everywhere I went this year.

I’ve tried to pull together these latest developments in our new documentary, “Cannabis Madness.” […]

I know the discussion around this topic will no doubt get heated. I have felt that heat. But I feel a greater responsibility than ever to make sure those heated discussions are also well-informed by science.

And, with that: I hope you get a chance to watch on March 11 at 10 p.m. Eastern.

Nice.

War of Words: The International Narcotics Control Board vs. A Changing World. The INCB withdrew its head from its nether regions briefly yesterday to release its 2013 report. Phillip Smith comments.

This could be a surprise to a lot of parents…. DEA Official: ‘Every Single Parent’ Opposes Marijuana Legalization. Oh, yeah, and that was in testimony in Congress.

Washington, DC decriminalizes marijuana possession

The ONDCP comments on the President’s FY 2015 budget.

the President’s National Drug Control Strategy represents a 21st century approach to drug policy that outlines innovative policies and programs and recognizes that substance use disorders are not just a criminal justice issue, but also a major public health concern. The Strategy lays out an evidence-based plan for real drug policy reform, spanning the spectrum of prevention, early intervention, treatment, recovery support, criminal justice reform, effective law enforcement, and international cooperation.

Yep. More of the same.

Mark Kleiman has an extensive piece in Washington Monthly: How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization: Leaving it to the states is a recipe for disaster.

As usual, with Mark, it’s a mix of some very good material and some unsupported nonsense that is just there to support his personal nanny-state preferences for public policy.

First, the good.

The undeniable gains from legalization consist mostly of getting rid of the damage done by prohibition. (Indeed, as E. J. Dionne and William Galston have pointed out, polling suggests that support for legalization is driven more by discontent with prohibition than by enthusiasm for pot.) Right now, Americans spend about $35 billion a year on illegal cannabis. That money goes untaxed; the people working in the industry aren’t gaining legitimate job experience or getting Social Security credit, and some of them spend time behind bars and wind up with felony criminal records. About 650,000 users a year get arrested for possession, something much more likely to happen to a black user than a white one.

We also spend about $1 billion annually in public money keeping roughly 40,000 growers and dealers behind bars at any one time. That’s a small chunk of the incarceration problem, but it represents a lot of money and a lot of suffering. The enforcement effort, including the use of “dynamic entry” raids, imposes additional costs in money, liberty, police-community conflict, and, occasionally, lives. Cannabis dealing and enforcement don’t contribute much to drug-related violence in the United States, but they make up a noticeable part of Mexico’s problems.

Another gain from legalization would be to move the millions of Americans whose crimes begin and end with using illegal cannabis from the wrong side of the law to the right one, bringing an array of benefits to them and their communities in the form of a healthier relationship with the legal and political systems. Current cannabis users, and the millions of others who might choose to start using cannabis if the drug became legal, would also enjoy an increase in personal liberty and be able to pursue, without the fear of legal consequences, what is for most of them a harmless source of pleasure, comfort, relaxation, sociability, healing, creativity, or inspiration. For those people, legalization would also bring with it all the ordinary gains consumers derive from open competition: lower prices, easier access, and a wider range of available products and means of administration, held to quality standards the illicit market can’t enforce.

And he goes on to also mention public revenue from legalization and so forth. This is a pretty outstanding list of valuable benefits that would come from legalization and kudos to Mark for presenting them so clearly. This is good stuff.

Where we first get into his personal bias wheelhouse is in the issue of states leading the way.

The state-by-state approach has generated some happy talk from both advocates and some neutral observers; Justice Louis Brandeis’s praise for states as the “laboratories of democracy” has been widely quoted. […]

But letting legalization unfold state by state, with the federal government a mostly helpless bystander, risks creating a monstrosity; Dr. Frankenstein also had a laboratory.

Really? That’s where you decided to go with the laboratories of democracy? Dr. Frankenstein? As I tweeted earlier today, “What a bizarre and juvenile statement.”

It’s like saying “Illinois is considering building a chemical plant? Think of the risks; my son had a chemistry set and he practically blew up the garage.”

Yes, Dr. Frankenstein had a laboratory. How does that conceivably compare to the extensively state-regulated marijuana businesses we’ve seen in every single state that has legalized medical or recreational marijuana? Did Frankenstein have building inspectors, a medical review board, or zoning regulations to deal with?

Are there potential risks with the state model? Certainly. That’s part of any research. But conjuring up monsters isn’t an appropriate way to lead a discussion on it.

As more and more states begin to legalize marijuana over the next few years, the cannabis industry will begin to get richer—and that means it will start to wield considerably more political power, not only over the states but over national policy, too.

That’s how we could get locked into a bad system in which the primary downside of legalizing pot—increased drug abuse, especially by minors—will be greater than it needs to be, and the benefits, including tax revenues, smaller than they could be.

Sure. It could happen. Look, I’d be fine with a non-profit system, or a state-run marijuana store, or any other model as long as it provides legal access to a good variety of marijuana products for consenting adults.

But the federal government, quite frankly, has to really earn a lot in order to have any credibility in wanting to oversee marijuana legalization.

Legalization isn’t happening at the state level because states didn’t want the federal government to do it. Legalization is happening at the state level because there was no other choice. The federal government was simply not doing its job, and instead was stonewalling to try to prevent the necessary systems from being developed, even going so far as to systematically lie to the public and to block research.

Now that, through enormous work and sacrifice by ordinary people, legalization appears to be inevitable, Mark’s suggestion that “We can do better than that, but only if Congress takes action-and soon” in order for the federal government to control how legalization occurs, seems a bit late.

To be blunt, I say, “fuck the federal government.” Yes, I’d love to have the federal government step in and do it right and come up with a good national legalization approach, but they’re not to be trusted. They’ve clearly shown they are unwilling to do what’s necessary or right when it comes to drug policy unless they are dragged there by the people, the states, or the courts (and the courts haven’t been very willing to go up against the feds in drug policy either, so that leaves it to the people and the states).

And while it’s nice to have Kleiman and the other Academics of Drug Policy supporting some kind of legalization publicly now, as a group they haven’t really been an active part of the solution either. Transform, over in the UK, was putting out After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation, whereas our own academics at RAND were saying:

Nor do we explore the merits and demerits of legalizing drugs, even though legalization is perhaps the most prominent and hotly debated topic in drug policy. Our analysis takes current policy as its starting point, and the idea of repealing the nation’s drug laws has no serious support within either the Democratic or Republican party. Moreover, because legalization is untested, any prediction of its effects would be highly speculative.

More recently, Transform put out How to Regulate Cannabis: A Practical Guide while our academics published a book pointing out the uncertainties of things we don’t know.

And of course, Mark harps on one of his big points — his concern with commercialization.

What’s needed is federal legislation requiring states that legalize cannabis to structure their pot markets such that they won’t get captured by commercial interests.

What he claims bothers him the most about commercialization of marijuana distribution is a very questionable assumption:

Cannabis consumption, like alcohol consumption, follows the so-called 80/20 rule (sometimes called “Pareto’s Law”): 20 percent of the users account for 80 percent of the volume. So from the perspective of cannabis vendors, drug abuse isn’t the problem; it’s the target demographic. Since we can expect the legal cannabis industry to be financially dependent on dependent consumers, we can also expect that the industry’s marketing practices and lobbying agenda will be dedicated to creating and sustaining problem drug use patterns.

There are a number of problems with this. First, Pareto’s Law is a general approach to looking at business trends, and it doesn’t mean that 80% of all marijuana sales will be part of problematic use, despite the inference often given by Mark, et al.

But the thing that really gets me is the point, made over and over again by Mark (and picked up by the “Big Marijuana” idiots) that commercial businesses will make their profits by marketing to problematic users and by marketing to create problematic users.

I really don’t see the evidence to support this.

When I marketed theatre, you know the one group I didn’t spend much money or effort attempting to sway? Theatre-goers. They were my captive audience – all I had to do is announce what I was doing and they would come.

Marketing is primarily about brand awareness, brand loyalty, and, in some cases, introducing the benefits of a product to new customers. It’s not about feeding or growing dependencies. That happens separate from marketing.

Sure, if marketing causes an increase in the overall number of users, and you assume that the same percentage of those new users will become dependent as in the original class, then marketing could lead to dependency indirectly. But that assumption is flat-out contradicted by evidence and common sense, since prohibition laws, to the extent that they deter at all, are more likely to deter casual non-problematic use than problematic use.

I know that it’s popular to claim that marketing is used to cause dependency, but there’s really very little evidence to support that claim.

Let’s take a look at alcohol — one of the areas that the “Big Marijuana” folks are particularly fond of using as a model for why we should be concerned about commercial advertising of marijuana products.

According to the “10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health, Highlights from Current Research” from the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In general, experimental studies based in laboratory settings provide little consistent evidence that alcohol advertising influences people’s drinking behaviors or beliefs about alcohol and its effects (Kohn and Smart 1984; Kohn et al. 1984; Lipsitz 1993; Slater et al. 1997; Sobell et al. 1986). In addition, econometric studies of market data have produced mixed results, with most showing no significant relationship between advertising and overall consumption levels (Fisher and Cook 1995; Gius 1996; Goel and Morey 1995; Nelson and Moran 1995).

This really does suggest that it’s more about brand advertising than “drink alcohol to excess” advertising. Those who have a drinking problem don’t need to be told by women in bikinis to drink.

Just as with my theatre patrons, even though the regulars may have provided me with 80% of my ticket sales, the bulk of my marketing efforts always went after the ones that wouldn’t be coming without me convincing them. With beer, it’s about convincing you to buy Budweiser instead of Miller. With pot, it’ll first be about informing you that you can buy it and where, then it’ll be about developing brand loyalty (why you should buy from this store instead of another one, or this strain instead of another one…) and, if we’re lucky, there will be an additional advertising thrust to convince people to consume pot instead of alcohol (substitution advertising). But there’s no effective marketing strategy to go after or create dependencies, even if those decencies end up profiting the business.

All this is just a part of the “commercial business is always bad” meme. Again, if you want to promote a non-profit or government model, fine. Hey, how about that state laboratories thing? Convince a state to legalize with a non-profit or state-run approach. We’ll see how it works.

I remember the state-operated liquor store approach from when I lived in Iowa. It had its pros and cons. One of the pros was one year when there was a world-wide shortage of a particular spirit — but not in Iowa, because as a state they had such huge buying power that they were able to get their supply when commercial liquor distributors could not. Hmmm, probably not an argument that helps Mark, is it?

Mark Kleiman seems so convinced that without extremely heavy-handed interference by government, there will be unacceptable levels of individuals whose lives are ruined by pot. It’s just not clear that that’s true.

A monster of completely unknown danger is not being stitched together in dark laboratory by Dr. Frankenstein only to be released to a cruel and intolerant world.

We’re legalizing cannabis.

One of the sad stories on my Drug War Victims page is about Gary Shepherd, a Vietnam veteran who had grown marijuana plants, and during a standoff with police, was shot to death in front of his infant son.

That son, Jacob, is now grown up — he’s a student at the University of Kentucky, and has been an activist in the fight against prohibition.

A fight for marijuana legalization, growing for 20 years

Shepherd is starting a student organization, Cats for Cannabis, having enlisted about 25 potential members and started applying for official status. A strong anti-prohibition group on a campus of nearly 30,000 students could make a big difference, he said.

At the least, he said, it’s a step toward legalizing a drug with a negative stigma — a stigma that has ravished individuals and families across the country.

“We can’t be afraid of it and let our fears justify me having to see my dad die,” he said.

It’s an incredibly powerful and well-written article by Becca Clemons at the Kentucky Kernel, that goes back to details of the original standoff, and brings their impact home today…

Shepherd and his mother still live in the trailer in Rockcastle County, and Shepherd makes the hourlong commute to UK. Bullet holes from the shooting still pepper the side of the trailer. One made it through the side of the home and into the kitchen counter.

Inside, the neatly kept living room hosts a subtle shrine to pot activism. The homages to cannabis culture include a nondescript bookshelf with literature on marijuana, hemp sacks with pro-marijuana slogans decorating the walls, and other pot-related knickknacks tucked into nooks and crannies. […]

Years after the shooting and ensuing lawsuits, Jones’ outreach remained stagnant. But in the past few years Shepherd took up activism himself, a personal fight to assure that “no kid has to go through the shit I did.” […]

“I was 4 at that time and I was really just trying to understand it,” Shepherd said. “Like, this is a war zone.”

So much blood covered his small body that he thought he was shot.

“I remember looking at my arms, looking for the wound,” he said.

Apparently, once legalization happens, everyone’s going to quit their jobs and just say “Dude” a lot.

After legalization, he said, “if there’s advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world’s pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together.”

Right.

1. Alcohol.
2. Pot’s not new (though Brown should know that).
3. Even though there’s a slim chance in hell of it happening even with legalization, I’ve got to say that I’d feel a whole lot safer if I knew our Secretary of State was sharing a bowl right now.
4. There’s something really offensive about this kind of statement inferring that citizens are merely slaves or tools of the state and their sole purpose is to provide a certain level of productivity.

Yakima City Council supports seeking pot tax revenue

At the heart of the debate was whether it would be hypocritical for the council, which banned the growing, processing and sale of marijuana within city limits, to seek tax revenue raised by businesses in cities that do allow them. But the five council members in attendance agreed with staff that easier access statewide could have a local impact on law enforcement.

“I’m prepared to defend cries of hypocrisy from now until whenever,” Councilman Dave Ettl said.

Best response:

Alison Holcomb, criminal justice director for the ACLU of Washington and author of the initiative, said the law was written to dedicate funds to statewide public health and safety efforts, but she worries local governments are trying to skim some of that to boost their general funds.

She said it is hypocritical for cities that banned pot businesses to seek funds generated from those businesses. Holcomb said the Yakima City Council only contributed to the problems law enforcement may face when it voted in January to ban pot businesses.

“They’re continuing to contribute to the problems of illegal sales and illegal activity, and they should not benefit from continuing to contribute to this problem,” Holcomb said in a telephone interview from Seattle.