Drug WarRant

I almost hate to keep beating this horse…

As you may recall, Mark Kleiman made some ridiculous ad hominem attacks on Jacob Sullum regarding discussion President Obama’s implication in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN that he couldn’t reschedule marijuana (Sullum merely pointed out that Obama could, and Kleiman yelled at Sullum that rescheduling would have “identically zero” practical effect.)

This exchange continued in Twitter with Mark claiming that Jacob should have written about the question that Mark claims Jake Tapper actually meant to ask (yeah, really!).

Now Jacob Sullum has come back with an article specifically addressing some of the possible benefits of rescheduling: More Than Zero: Reclassifying Marijuana Would Have a Significant Impact on Drug Policy

Moving marijuana to a less restrictive legal category would have some significant practical effects, perhaps the most important of which would be to advance a more honest discussion of marijuana’s hazards and benefits. […]

Rescheduling marijuana would not affect the legal status of state-licensed cannabusinesses in states such as Colorado and Washington, which would still be criminal enterprises in the eyes of the federal government. But Gieringer notes that rescheduling could remove one of the major financial challenges facing state-legal marijuana suppliers: Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code prohibits the deduction of business expenses related to “trafficking in controlled substances,” but only for drugs on Schedule I or II. If marijuana were moved to, say, Schedule III, that prohibition would no longer apply. […]

But even moving marijuana down one level, from Schedule I to Schedule II, could have an important impact on the drug policy debate. For one thing, it would free the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which is required by law to oppose the legalization of any Schedule I substance, to talk about the hazards of marijuana a little more honestly. Such freedom is desperately needed, to judge by the effort required to extract the concession that marijuana is safer than alcohol from ONDCP Deputy Director Michael Botticelli at a congressional hearing this week. […]

Since Congress banned marijuana in 1937, says Houston, “we have seen extremely cynical efforts to overblow the danger of marijuana and to demonize it. A move to reschedule or unschedule would be the first time since 1937 that our government started to roll back some of that reefer madness.”

The best solution, of course, is to completely deschedule cannabis and that would require Congress to do something. But the President could and should (given this administration’s claims to care about science) do the right thing and at least reschedule. The impact would certainly be more than identically zero.

Yes, that Congress… (via Jacob Sullum and Raw Story)

“How many people die from marijuana overdoses every year?” Connolly asked.

“I don’t know that I know. It is very rare,” Botticelli replied.

“Very rare. Now just contrast that with prescription drugs, unintentional deaths from prescription drugs, one American dies every 19 minutes,” Connolly said. “Nothing comparable to marijuana. Is that correct?”

Botticelli admitted that was true.

“Alcohol—hundreds of thousands of people die every year from alcohol-related deaths: automobile [accidents], liver disease, esophageal cancer, blood poisoning,” Connolly continued. “Is that incorrect?”

But Botticelli refused to answer. Guessing where the line of questioning was headed, he said the “totality of harm” associated with marijuana indicated it was a dangerous drug, even though it was not associated with deaths.

“I guess I’m sticking with the president—the head of your administration—who is making a different point,” Connolly fired back. “He is making a point that is empirically true. That isn’t a normative statement, that marijuana is good or bad, but he was contrasting it with alcohol and empirically he is correct, is he not?”

Botticelli again tried to dodge the question, but Connolly interrupted him and told him to answer.

“Is it not a scientific fact that there is nothing comparable with marijuana?” Connolly asked. “And I’m not saying it is good or bad, but when we look at deaths and illnesses, alcohol, other hard drugs are certainly—even prescription drugs—are a threat to public health in a way that just isolated marijuana is not. Isn’t that a scientific fact? Or do you dispute that fact?”

“I don’t dispute that fact,” Botticelli said.

Thud.

Decriminalization in DC — decrim vote expected today. $25 fine for marijuana possession.

Former cop is ‘linchpin’ of campaign to legalize marijuana – nice profile of LEAP’s Neill Franklin

The dangers of abstinence-based recovery programs – by David Nutt

Did libertarianism kill Philip Seyour Hoffman? Conservative Ben Shapiro thinks so – Nick Gillespie

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman’s astonishing performances live on stage in both Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2003) and Death of a Salesman (2012), and I always found him a joy to watch in his incredible range of roles in the movies. He was one of those rare truly unique talents.

I admit to some purely selfish reasons for being upset with his passing, just in thinking about all those future roles he now won’t play. I would have loved to see what he could do as an old man.

There will be a lot of discussion about heroin and addiction in the next few days, and a lot of that will be ignorant knee-jerk reactions (I’m already seeing some friends on Facebook declaring how this reinforces the importance of telling people to just say “no” to drugs.)

It’s a lot more complicated than that, and I have questions… Does this have any connection to the new batch of dangerous fentanyl-poisoned heroin being distributed on the east cost? How does this connect to his recent stint in treatment? (As we know, treatment can actually lead to overdose if people aren’t aware of the change in their tolerance.) Why was he alone? (Does stigma increase the danger and reduce the opportunities for reversing the overdose with naloxone?) Was uncertain dosage due to prohibition a factor?

Perhaps this will be an opportunity for some good discussion. That would be nice.

Carl Hart has an outstanding piece in The Nation: How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy

He talks about some of the early demonization:

The author, a distinguished physician, wrote: “[The Negro fiend] imagines that he hears people taunting and abusing him, and this often incites homicidal attacks upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.” And he continued, “the deadly accuracy of the cocaine user has become axiomatic in Southern police circles…. the record of the ‘cocaine nigger’ near Asheville who dropped five men dead in their tracks using only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is sufficiently convincing.”

Cocaine, in other words, made black men uniquely murderous and better marksmen. But that wasn’t all. It also produced “a resistance to the ‘knock down’ effects of fatal wounds. Bullets fired into vital parts that would drop a sane man in his tracks, fail to check the ‘fiend.’”

Hart goes on to talk about how this racism wasn’t limited to days gone by, but has continued as an integral part of our drug war all the way to today.

This, of course, is no surprise to regulars here, but it’s good to see this piece in The Nation as a reminder.

Lately, I’ve seen some commentary online that seems to be attempting to say that legalization in general is bad for African-Americans, and that the fact that the majority of people in the legalization movement are white is proof of self-interest. However, we know that the racism that has been involved in the drug war has also served to feed the circular desire for “law and order” that fuels prohibition in the inner cities.

Anybody who’s been involved in marijuana policy during the past, oh, 42 years, knows about scheduling. Cannabis was placed into Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, provisionally, and, despite the Commission report which should have removed it, was left there. Since then, every petition to change the scheduling has been blocked, not by scientific evidence, but by political decisions from the executive branch.

Of course, having marijuana on Schedule 1 has led to serious real harms, including the restriction on using a medical necessity defense in federal courts (US v. Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Cooperative).

The Schedule 1 status has also had potent symbolic political power, with the DEA holding a death grip on the status to protect their enforcement turf (while simultaneously allowing easy and fast rescheduling for pharmaceutical products like Marinol).

Of course, in recent years, it’s become more and more obvious, to even the general population, how absurd it is to have cannabis classified in Schedule 1 (or, for that matter, to be scheduled at all, when alcohol and tobacco are not).

So it’s not likely to be popular to let people know that you have the ability to change that classification… and haven’t. Which may be why President Obama weaseled his way out of any responsibility for it in his most recent interview.

Confused About Power to Reschedule Pot, Advocates Say (by Steven Nelson in US News and World Report):

“What is and isn’t a Schedule I narcotic is a job for Congress,” Obama told Jake Tapper of CNN. “It’s not something by ourselves that we start changing. No, there are laws under – undergirding those determinations.” […]

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., tells U.S. News it’s “very clear” that the law “actually permits reclassification administratively.”

“I don’t dispute that Congress could and should make the change, but it’s also something the administration could do in a matter of days and I hope they will consider it,” says Blumenauer, who is currently circulating a letter among colleagues asking Obama to do so. Eight members of Congress have signed the letter so far.

I, too, would like to see Congress step up, but there’s no doubt that the President can act independently.

Also pointing out the simple and uncontroversial fact that the President has the power to reschedule, was Jacob Sullum, who wrote: Obama, Who Evidently Has Not Read the Controlled Substances Act, Denies That He Has the Power to Reclassify Marijuana.

Obama often speaks as if he is an outside observer of his own administration […]

That led to this bizarre screed by Mark A.R. Kleiman: Futile pursuits: chasing rainbows and rescheduling cannabis. Kleiman, while not identifying a single inaccuracy in Sullum’s report, nevertheless chose to spew this:

The discussion of “rescheduling” marijuana is confused because most of the people engaged in it don’t know how the law works.

Jacob Sullum, always willing to let his ignorance be the measure of other people’s knowledge, utterly unwilling to let mere facts get in the way of libertarian ideology, and eager to please his paymasters by slagging a Democratic President, illustrates my point in his response to the latest CNN Obama interview.

Those who read Mark Kleiman’s blog on a regular basis know that he suffers from an extreme case of libertarian derangement syndrome. Mark is a big fan of nanny-state government and a strong promoter of intervention into the lives of those whom Kleiman believes are unable/unwilling to make appropriate/proper decisions for themselves. (You see this in his preferences for extremely high regulation of currently illicit drugs and alcohol, particularly as relates to those who abuse them.) One of his biggest fears appears to be a net reduction in government authority in our lives.

While he often criticizes government himself, it is with the idea of reforming or replacing the corrupt or improperly working program. Any attempt to suggest ending/reducing (or even criticizing) a nanny-state program without in the same breath pointing out the value of government intervention is met with this same libertarian derangement syndrome reaction.

Of course, I’m just conducting my own little Psychology 101 experiment in trying to read Mr. Kleiman, but the analysis seems to fit. It goes a way toward explaining the also bizarre decision to recently criticize Radley Balko’s work out of the blue.

Note to Radley Balko: Congratulations on your new gig at the Washington Post. Your criticisms of police excess – often spot-on – would have more cred if, just once, you celebrated police success, or noticed that liberty can be threatened by crime as well as by official misconduct. […]

I’m all for Radley’s exposes of police misconduct. I’d just prefer if he occasionally reminded his readers what the police are there for in the first place.

Many of us in drug policy reform have received the brunt of Mark’s wrath many times for merely being activists. We see our job as being primarily to bring an end to the destruction of prohibition, and don’t all agree that the best replacement for it is heavy regulatory interference, regardless of whether we are liberal, libertarian, conservative, or something else. We also see the discussion of what to do about drug abuse post-prohibition to be its own valuable separate discussion.

And yet, Mr. Kleiman regularly takes honest anti-drug war activism (if it doesn’t also explicitly call for a sufficient level of nanny-statism), and equates it with the corruption and dishonesty of prohibitionists (worse-yet, the corruption and dishonesty of prohibitionists utilizing the power of government). That equation just doesn’t balance.

I have, in the past, pointed out that I believe Mark Kleiman to be quite intelligent and knowledgeable about drug policy, and I have noted numerous times when I have agreed with him.

But to use his own words, I think his policy recommendations would “have more cred” if he was able to accept the fact that there are critiques of specific government actions/programs (by libertarians, drug policy reformers, or others) that can be valid per se, without also providing some shibboleth of supporting governmental intervention.

Congress warms up to research on hemp

WASHINGTON — Hemp is a big winner in the new farm bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday.

While Congress has shown little interest in legalizing marijuana, members are warming up to industrial hemp, pot’s nonintoxicating sister plant. […]

The farm bill would allow state departments of agriculture, colleges and universities to grow hemp for academic, research and marketing purposes in states that have voted to make cultivation legal.

Besides California and Kentucky, the measure would apply to Colorado, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia, said Tom Murphy, the national outreach coordinator for Vote Hemp, an organization that backs legalization.

Naturally, Kevin Sabet had to get in on the action…

Kevin Sabet, the director of the University of Florida Drug Policy Institute and a former adviser on drug issues for Obama, said people could easily grow marijuana and hide it under the guise of hemp, frustrating law-enforcement efforts.

“This is purely a political move to further a pro-marijuana agenda,” Sabet said. “It has little to do with actually farming hemp, since the demand for that is so low. But in some states that need help on the job front, it’s good politics to claim that allowing this will create jobs. The sad truth is that it will do no such thing.”

Not only does he imply that law enforcement is too stupid to do their job, but he appears to be running off his mouth without even knowing the contents of the bill. He really gets more pathetic (and desperate) by the day.

…

Speaking of pathetic…

Check out the new billboard ad from Project SAM set to compete with the Marijuana Policy Project billboards:

It’s pathetic in a number of ways, not the least of which is the amateurish design.

According to the press release:

The ad is funded by Policy Solutions Group, Inc., a consulting company headed up by Dr. Sabet that sponsors Project SAM.

Based on an internet search for Policy Solutions Group, Inc., it appears that the company essentially only exists in Kevin’s bio. So who is funding Kevin?

…

Oh, and guess what? Now Kevin wants to compete with Marijuana Majority

Sabet says SAM soon will unveil a new site of its own that will clarify who’s against legalization.

No surprise: Obama Says Exactly Zero Words About Pot, Drug Policy Or Criminal Justice Reform in SOTU

Drugs vs. the drug war: A response to Michael Gerson. Radley Balko hits it out of the park in this piece that starts out as a response, but ends up being a rather comprehensive set of reasons to oppose the drug war. This is definitely worth sharing with friends.

Drug War Addict of the Year – a fine honor for Mr. Chabot from Diane Wattles-Goldstein.

One of the recurring themes I enjoyed on “The West Wing” was the big block of cheese day – an annual event where White House staff would hear concerns and ideas from citizens that normally would not get the government’s ear.

The current White House is resurrecting this notion with a virtual big block of cheese day on Wednesday.

In 1837, President Jackson hosted an open house featuring a 1,400-pound block of cheese. On Wednesday, January 29th, with a nod to history (and maybe the TV show the West Wing), White House officials will take to social media for a day long ‘open house’ to answer questions from everyday Americans.

The difference, obvious in the White House explanation, was that in the big block of cheese day on “The West Wing,” the White House staffers listened. Here, they will “answer questions.” Kind of misses the point.

What’s interesting to me about this is that a few brief years ago, many of us would have seen this as an opportunity to get drug policy reform “heard” by the government. No longer. Drug policy is clearly no longer the silent topic that nobody will discuss. These days, it’s hard to even keep up with all the national discussions on the issue.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we’ll be hearing a lot about it tonight in the State of the Union address. It might happen. If it does, I would guess it would have nothing to do with marijuana legalization or medical marijuana, but rather a brief mention of racial inequalities and/or treatment needs.

Which is at least better than the last SOTU that I remember where drugs were mentioned. In 2004, the President used the SOTU to call for additional money for school drug testing.

Demaryius Thomas was 11 when his mother and grandmother were taken from him and sent to prison for 20 years and life respectively as part of our unending drug war.

He’s certainly done well — better than most others who have lost family to the drug war. Finding your way is so much more difficult when your family has been taken prisoner.

I have no knowledge of the details of Demaryius Thomas’ mother and grandmother’s arrest and imprisonment. Maybe they are bad people — I don’t know (but I doubt it). What I do know is that they were swept up by bad laws.

And they are part of a story of thousands of families across this country that have been senselessly broken by this destructive and costly drug war.