Drug WarRant

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.

Jacob Sullum notes the absurdity: U.S. General Complains That Marijuana Legalization Makes Latin American Officials Less Eager To Join The War On Drugs

General John F. Kelly:

We’ve been encouraging these countries to be in the drug fight for 25 years. The levels of violence that our drug problem has caused in many of these countries is just astronomical. And so when we talk about decriminalizing, the example I would give you is the two states that voted to decriminalize marijuana, or legalize marijuana. Most of the…countries I deal with were in utter disbelief that we would, in their opinion, be going in that direction, particularly after 25 years of encouraging them to fight our drug problem in their countries and, you know, in their littorals. So that’s kind of where they are on it. They’re very polite to me, but every now and again when they’re not so polite, the term hypocrite gets into the discussion. But frankly, the crime rate is so high in many of these countries and the fact that they see us turning away from the drug fight…They’re starting to chatter a lot about, “Well, why don’t we just step back and let it flow?”

The general’s statement is its own parody, and hardly requires much debunking (although Sullum does that as well).

Dan Freed: Drug Cartels Take Colorado? Drug Enforcer Backtracks

NEW YORK (TheStreet) –Has Colorado’s reckless decriminalization of marijuana opened the floodgates to all kinds of chaos and iniquity?

You might be forgiven for thinking that, if you read this widely-syndicated Gannett story entitled “Feds worry that drug cartels are moving into Colo.”

But the story offers no evidence of a link. Quoted in the story is Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which, the story tells us, is connected to the White House National Office of Drug Control Policy.
“Our intelligence tells us, and all indications are (drug cartels) are going to move in if they haven’t already,” Gorman says.

In a subsequent radio interview Gorman continues to engage in scare tactics, saying Colorado marijuana retailers could easily end up being victims of extortion.

The article points out that Gorman later backtracks on his statement (not that anyone was really buying it).

Freed notes: “The whole scare campaign seems so ham-handed, frankly, it recalls-well-the War on Drugs: a ham-handed campaign that is way past its expiration date.”

Link

TORONTO, Feb. 27, 2014 /CNW/ – A recent national study¹ commissioned by the Partnership for a Drug Free Canada revealed that almost 25% of parents of teenagers did not consider driving while high on cannabis to be as bad as drinking and driving. Meanwhile, almost a third of teens (32%) did not consider driving under the influence of cannabis to be as bad as alcohol.

Well, since I’m not aware of a single study that claims marijuana impairment is as dangerous to driving as alcohol impairment, nor a single scientist in the field that would claim it, I think it’s safe to say that it’s a verifiable fact that driving while high on cannabis (regardless of its potential for danger) is not as bad as drinking and driving.

What should be disturbing is that only 25% of the parents and 32% of the teens realized this (or, at least, were willing to admit that knowledge on a study commissioned by the Partnership for a Drug Free Canada).

What a bizarre factoid to use in their campaign.

From reading the rest of the press release, it appears that, to the Partnership, the correct answer to the question of “Which is more dangerous: cannabis impairment or alcohol impairment?” is “C: Facts don’t matter; impairment is impairment.”

Yes, we do keep track of Andrea’s public activities here at the Rant. After all, we’re the ones who exposed her Illinois Marijuana Lecture series and her End Needless Death program, both based on falsehoods.

She’s been director of more companies than I can count – simply keeps creating new ones.

Haven’t seen much of her lately. Perhaps in the states people know too much about her. However, they’re bringing her in to Bermuda.

Weed killer?

A former deputy drug czar for the US will outline the dangers of marijuana use before a group of medical doctors and general practitioners tomorrow night.

Dr Andrea Barthwell, the managing partner and medical director of the Chicago-based addiction treatment centre Two Dreams, says the alleged medical benefits of the plant are overblown.

From a quick look at the comments, seems the folks in Bermuda aren’t too excited about her visit, either.

There’s a distinct buzz out there about this event: Annapolis police chief apologizes for citing hoax story in testimony against marijuana legalization

Testifying against bills proposed in Maryland to legalize and decriminalize marijuana, Annapolis Police Chief Michael Pristoop cited a hoax story that claimed 37 people died the first day marijuana was legalized in Colorado.

“The first day of legalization, that’s when Colorado experienced 37 deaths that day from overdose on marijuana,” Pristoop said in testimony at Tuesday’s Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing. “I remember the first day it was decriminalized there were 37 deaths.”

I remember when that satire piece came out as well. We joked about the gullible idiots on Twitter who actually thought that was somehow true.

Pristoop was immediately corrected by Senator Jamie Raskin, who was not a gullible idiot on Twitter.

Now, of course, people are trying to backtrack…

“After conducting additional research, it appears that was not accurate at all,” Pristoop said. “I believed at the time that was accurate. But I don’t think it takes away from the other facts we presented… I’m guilty of being a human being. I tried really hard to present verified facts.” […]

Annapolis Mayor Mike Pantelides said he remains confident in Pristoop, whom he believed errored in his testimony. […]
Pristoop’s focus on heroin enforcement may have influenced his comments in front of the Maryland General Assembly, Pantelides said.

“Clearly when you’re constantly dealing with a drug where people overdose, it’s probably in your head to think overdoses, drugs,” he said. “Again, it could have just been a slip of he said something he shouldn’t have.”[…]

Alderman Fred Paone, a member of the Annapolis City Council’s Public Safety committee, said he had not read the hoax article or Pristoop’s comments, but believed the police chief’s remarks were likely “a good faith mistake.”

“The guy is doing his job and frankly you get kind of intense when you’re in the middle of something,” Paone, R-Ward 2, said.

No.

Let’s be clear, here. This is not a good faith mistake. This is not a slip of the tongue.

This is the chief law enforcement officer of a major city claiming to be enough of an expert on a topic to actually testify in front of the Senate, with a goal of using his “facts” to justify continuing arresting people, and in the course of that testimony, actually and earnestly claims something so ridiculously false that any high school student would know it was parody.

Remember: Police Chief Michael Pristoop didn’t accidentally tweet it like those idiots we ridiculed. He used it in testimony in the State Senate.

This truly exemplifies the way that law enforcement has worked to corrupt the legislative process when it comes to marijuana. They’re not interested in facts, only ammunition. The truth about medical marijuana’s value, or the truth about the impact on marijuana’s use on society doesn’t matter to them a single bit, and so they don’t even care to learn it. All they care about is protecting their ability to use these unjust laws and their revenue stream that comes from marijuana enforcement.

And so they show up to testify at every legislative hearing (and what politician wants to go against law enforcement in uniform?) as they regurgitate canned talking points usually crafted by prohibitionists further up the food chain.

Police Chief Michael Pristoop got caught. And this should be brought up every time law enforcement officials show up to testify about why marijuana must remain illegal.

Again, it’s important to note that Pristoop represents a particular element of law enforcement that needs correction. His kind are not the only ones in the field.

I could sense the sadness in this tweet from Neil Franklin, who represents a lot of good cops as head of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition:

Not much I can say about this embarrassing moment in Annapolis. Cops need to work with change, not against it. http://t.co/SE6ENZ5ZnZ

The head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has been arrested.

From what I can tell, he’s probably a pretty bad guy who should be put away for a long time.

And yet, when you look at the practical results of this arrest, the overwhelming consensus is that one or both of these two things will happen:

• His second in command will take over and there will be no discernable impact in the activities of his criminal organization
• Criminal rivals will attempt to exploit any perceived weaknesses with a massive amount of violence and bloodshed.

So it’s hard for anyone to get too excited about the arrest.

When you reach a point where the net benefit to society of arresting a dangerous, violent criminal is, at best, zero, then perhaps it’s time to admit that you have some seriously broken policy.

These articles are from last week, but I didn’t get a chance to comment on them then.

In recent years there has been an explosion in reporting on “drugged driving.” (I have my own news filter on that term.) Most of this reporting has been over-the-top exploitative fear-mongering; most of it has been really aimed at marijuana (instead of all drugged driving as it purports); and all of it has been driven by an obsession of the ONDCP to find a back-door way to demonize and extra-criminalize marijuana.

I have consistently pushed back against this effort because I think it is dangerous in a number of ways (even managed to force the drug czar to shut up about it once), and sometimes I have been counseled by other drug policy reformers to be careful about it because the public isn’t going to respond well to the notion that driving while stoned is safe.

But of course, driving isn’t safe. But it’s relatively safe. Your odds of getting in an accident are fairly low, particularly if you’re smart about it. So when you see reporting of an unconfirmed study that says marijuana intoxication doubles your changes of an accident, that’s still pretty low — especially when being intoxicated on alcohol increases your changes of an accident by 15 or 20 times.

Again, this doesn’t mean you should drive when impaired on anything, but it means that getting all panicky about marijuana-impaired drivers causing Armageddon on the highways, and focusing law enforcement efforts on criminalizing anyone with any amount of metabolites in their blood, is really bad public policy.

So it’s nice to see some slightly more fact-based reporting starting to surface, particularly in the New York Times: Driving Under the Influence, of Marijuana by Maggie Koerth-Baker:

“And there’s always somebody who says, ‘I drive better while high.’ ”

Evidence suggests that is not the case. But it also suggests that we may not have as much to fear from stoned driving as from drunken driving. Some researchers say that limited resources are better applied to continuing to reduce drunken driving. Stoned driving, they say, is simply less dangerous. […]

The study’s lead author, Eduardo Romano, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, said that once he adjusted for demographics and the presence of alcohol, marijuana did not statistically increase the risk of a crash.

“Despite our results, I still think that marijuana contributes to crash risk,” he said, “only that its contribution is not as important as it was expected.”

The difference in risk between marijuana and alcohol can probably be explained by two things, Dr. Huestis and Dr. Romano both say. First, stoned drivers drive differently from drunken ones, and they have different deficits. Drunken drivers tend to drive faster than normal and to overestimate their skills, studies have shown; the opposite is true for stoned drivers.

Thanks to the New York Times. Also doing good reporting on this on a regular basis is Jacob Sullum.

Here, on the other hand, is NBC with fact-free fear mongering: Pot Fuels Surge in Drugged Driving Deaths

“Nobody will take this seriously until somebody loses another loved one.”