Drug WarRant

Longmont toddler tests positive for THC after acting oddly

Satur said the girl’s mother said she does not use drugs, but she told police she found the girl eating a cookie that she had reportedly found outside the family’s apartment complex on the 200 block of East Eighth Avenue about a half hour before the family headed to the store. […]

Satur said the toddler is fine.

Expect to hear more of this kind of story.

So, a toddler eats something off the street she shouldn’t have and is fine, and that’s news? Yep.

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By the way, it’s ridiculous how many idiots on Twitter and Facebook were actually taken in by the very badly written Daily Current satire piece that said 37 people died of marijuana overdoses the first day.

Some… interesting… predictions in this piece: Pot law: Hazy days ahead for state

From Jonathan Caulkins:

Caulkins expects impaired driving to become a bigger issue, particularly after initial 2013 reports from the Washington State Patrol showed a 50 percent increase in the number of drivers testing positive for pot.

This is either imprecise speech or lazy reporting. What does “become a bigger issue” mean? It could mean that he thinks it’ll come up in political cannabis-related discussions more often (with which I agree), or it could mean that he thinks there will be more impaired driving (with which I would disagree). So I can’t really evaluate the prediction. And the second half of the sentence is meaningless and distracting. Any comment, Jon?

Note: Jon has other predictions regarding vaporizing with which I agree.

From Kevin Sabet:

Legalization critic Kevin Sabet of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) predicts little reduction in black-market violence, more negative incidents involving youth and pot, and an increase in DUI cases. Sabet said voters will start to realize legalization “may not be what they bargained for.”

He also sees the emergence of a Big Marijuana industry that finds a way around state restrictions on public use and promotion.

That’s not a prediction. It’s a wish list. Sorry, Kev. And I’d invite you to respond, but you’ve made it clear that you won’t talk to me.

Mark Kleiman:

Concentrated forms of marijuana, such as butane hash oil, will come to dominate the market over herbal buds and flowers, Kleiman predicted.

This one baffles me.

Conventional wisdom is that prohibition always results in more concentrated forms, where legal regimes tend to allow the emergence and popularity of more bulky, lower potency forms. With alcohol prohibition, for example, whiskey was the preferred drink and beer and wine were pretty much non-existent. The same is true with pretty much any drug.

I’m curious as to why higher concentration would be more desired in a legal regime, particularly when the majority of new use is likely to be casual users who probably won’t want too-high potency. If anything, the return of casual-use baby boomers, who quit cannabis because of its legal status, will result in increased demand for moderate potency product.

Now I don’t know much about butane hash oil, so maybe there’s some reason why it would become more popular than plant cannabis, but I’m not seeing it off-hand.

Unless the reason is that they set the purchasing limits so ridiculously low that people will need to purchase more concentrated products in order to have a reasonable consumable quantity?

Mark?

If nothing else, this article gives us some fun things to check out and come back to in the next year or two.

Update: Mark responds via Twitter:

That seems to be the trend in CA and WA. No harsh smoke, no smell, greater efficiency, greater user control of dosage.

Interesting. I’m curious to see if that plays out. I can see the potential if it actually means greater user control of dosage. But I really wonder if it discounts the existence of the “beer consumption style” of cannabis smoking where people actually enjoy the social process of consumption and not just getting to your preferred high more quickly and easily.

The excellent Diane Goldstein (a member of LEAP) has a good tongue-in-cheek column: I am a Recovering Drug War Addict

She suggests the need for a program for drug war addicts…

How do we create a “safe space” for both our political and law enforcement leaders to publicly acknowledge what most admit behind closed doors, which is that, indeed, our current policy is a failure. I propose that we start a Drug-War Addiction 12-step Program where lawmakers and law enforcement leaders can safely discuss why they are addicted to the Drug War (okay sarcasm here), and how they can change.

Here’s one of my favorite “steps” proposed:

Examining and making amends for past errors with the help of a sponsor. Making amends requires that we acknowledge that part of our failure to change is the addiction to the many perks of the Drug War. This can include policing for profit under the guise of asset forfeiture, federal categorical block grants that supplement police budgets based on narcotics enforcement only, or Department of Defense surplus equipment (4.2 billion worth nationally since 1990) that has contributed to the militarization of our police. I propose Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) to fulfill that role, as we have already conquered our addictions by adhering to these steps;

Link

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a law requiring Florida cash welfare recipients first pass a drug test. The law, enacted in 2011, had been temporarily blocked by a federal judge under grounds that it might constitute an illegal search and seizure.

Of course, the governor isn’t happy:

“Any illegal drug use in a family is harmful and even abusive to a child,” Scott said. “We should have a zero tolerance policy for illegal drug use in families – especially those families who struggle to make ends meet and need welfare assistance to provide for their children. We will continue to fight for Florida children who deserve to live in drug-free homes by appealing this judge’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals.”

But of course, the point is that the law is not directed at those who use illegal drugs. It assumes an entire class of people to be acting illegally unless they prove otherwise. And that is offensive to the Constitution.

This simple fact seems to elude so many seemingly intelligent individuals. I have had a lot of friends who support drug testing for welfare recipients, and their argument always goes something like the governor’s… “taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for their drug use…. if they’re going to break the law, they should be tested.”

There are a lot of arguments against testing – it’s not cost-effective, it’s demeaning, it doesn’t really help those who need help, but ultimately, the thing that makes it unacceptable to the Constitution is the simple fact that mandatory suspicionless drug testing by the government is not a reasonable search, which violates the Fourth Amendment.

The Denver Post has a new website for their pot culture reporter: The Cannabist, with cannabis reviews, recipes and much more.

Looks like a good site.

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Jacob Sullum writes about What to expect when Colorado’s marijuana shops open on Wednesday

Short answer: shortages and price increases

This peer-reviewed paper is several years old, but I thought it was very interesting and brought up some important points about how we in society tend to deal with those who wish to give up a particular “vice.”

The Global Research Neglect of Unassisted Smoking Cessation

It’s a study related to those who quit smoking tobacco, but the relevance goes far beyond that. Here’s the basic point…

As with problem drinking, gambling, and narcotics use, population studies show consistently that a large majority of smokers who permanently stop smoking do so without any form of assistance. In 2003, some 20 years after the introduction of cessation pharmacotherapies, smokers trying to stop unaided in the past year were twice as numerous as those using pharmacotherapies and only 8.8% of US quit attempters used a behavioural treatment. Moreover, despite the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to promote pharmacologically mediated cessation and numerous clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of pharmacotherapy, the most common method used by most people who have successfully stopped smoking remains unassisted cessation (cold turkey or reducing before quitting. In 1986, the American Cancer Society reported that: “Over 90% of the estimated 37 million people who have stopped smoking in this country since the Surgeon General’s first report linking smoking to cancer have done so unaided.” Today, unassisted cessation continues to lead the next most successful method (nicotine replacement therapy [NRT]) by a wide margin.

Yet, paradoxically, the tobacco control community treats this information as if it was somehow irresponsible or subversive and ignores the potential policy implications of studying self-quitters.

There is a ton of financial incentive in convincing people that they need help in quitting whatever they wish to quit, including self-interest from the treatment industry and the pharmacological industry. (One of the most bizarre things in my mind to happen in recent years has been the development of drugs to help people quit cannabis.)

Particularly irresponsible in this area has been the incessant emphasis on treatment by the U.S. government and the irresponsible “third-way-ers,” who have practically come out in favor of forced treatment for all illicit drug users. Of course, the truth is that most drug users do so non-problematically and don’t need help. And of those who have a problem with their use and wish to reduce or quit, a very large number could do so on their own.

This is not to say that treatment procedures and medications are without value. For some problem users, they can be life-saving.

But we’re essentially telling people that they can’t quit unless they get treatment. And that’s not only wrong, it’s potentially damaging as it may actually convince people that they are unable to quit.

We’re just days away from the first legal recreational sales in Colorado. Many are projecting shortages of product to begin with (not surprising as there will certainly be a beginning surge as a kind of celebration of the new status). It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out. City of Denver has even put out a map of retail stores.

One of the things that has come from all the discussions about legalization in Washington and Colorado is perhaps a better understanding of the word “legalize” on the part of the general public.

There have been understandable concerns about reformers using the “L” word in past years because the prohibitionists painted it as an extreme, so that many in the public thought that legalization meant anarchy.

Now that they’ve seen the exhaustive (and exhausting) debates over how to regulate legal cannabis, it seems to me that they’re understanding that legal doesn’t necessarily mean unregulated.

This will help in future polls regarding public views on legalization, not only of cannabis, but as we move to legalizing other substances (for which public support in the past has been anemic).

I’ve got a number of commitments over the holidays so I’ll be in and out here. Yet there’s a whole lot going on, so everyone take shifts and keep active in comments, while having a wonderful, joyous, and safe holidays.

Plenty of eggnog in the fridge, spiced cider on the stove, and someone brought some fresh-baked sugar cookies with sprinkles. I think the fruitcake finally got tossed out last year.

Thanks to Paul Armentano for his proper take-down of the ignorant comment so often floated out there — that we just don’t know that much about marijuana.

The Media Should Stop Pretending Marijuana’s Risks Are a Mystery — The Science is Clear

Speaking recently with the Los Angeles Times, UCLA professor and former Washington state “pot czar” Mark Kleiman implied that we as a society are largely ignorant when it comes to the subject of weed. Speaking with Times columnist Patt Morrison, Kleiman stated, “I keep saying we don’t know nearly as much about cannabis as Pillsbury knows about brownie mix.”

Kleiman’s allegation—that the marijuana plant and its effects on society still remains largely a mystery—is a fairly common refrain. But it is far from accurate.

Despite the US government’s nearly century-long prohibition of the plant, cannabis is nonetheless one of the most investigated therapeutically active substances in history. To date, there are over 20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were published within the last five years according to a keyword search on PubMed Central, the US government repository for peer-reviewed scientific research. Over 1,450 peer-reviewed papers were published in 2013 alone.

We know plenty about cannabis. We know more about cannabis than most (if not all) FDA-approved drugs, despite their vaunted exclusive process (which often has as much to do with politics and money as science).

The ‘we don’t know enough’ argument is used to delay or dilute legalization efforts (I would place Kleiman’s comments in the “dilute” category, formerly “delay”), and, in some cases, it is merely short for “I won’t be satisfied with any amount or type of studies until we find one that proves cannabis is bad.” (Sabet would probably be an example of that.)

Yesterday, Canada’s Supreme Court struck down some prohibition laws as being unconstitutional. It found that the laws were overbroad, and while it agreed that the government had the authority to regulate the activity, it was not allowable for that to happen “at the cost of the health, safety and lives of” those involved.

No, it wasn’t drugs, but it certainly seems familiar.

“Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes,” wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLaughlin, who referenced the case of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton. Pickton targeted prostitutes in British Columbia.

“A law that prevents street prostitutes from resorting to a safe haven such as Grandma’s House while a suspected serial killer prowls the streets is a law that has lost sight of its purpose.”

Living off the profits of prostitution, a law aimed at criminalizing pimping, was found to be “overbroad” in that it also criminalizes those who “increase the safety and security of prostitutes,” like legitimate drivers, managers and bodyguards.

While the Supreme Court would probably have been right to strike down the laws effective immediately, it actually gave the government a full year to find acceptable laws to replace these before they would be void.

And yet, predictably, some people are screaming.

Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies called it a “sad day.”

“We have now confirmed that it’s okay to buy and sell women and girls in this country,” she said. “I think generations to come, our daughters and granddaughters will look back and say, ‘what were they thinking?’ ”

Really? Is it possible to get any more ridiculous in your reaction to the news than that?

It sounds a lot like some of the drug war prohibitionists here who think that legalizing and regulating drugs means we don’t care about the welfare of those who use drugs (when it’s exactly the opposite).

The true-believer supporters of prohibition laws (as opposed to the profiteers) are either too stupid to understand, or too blinded by the certainty of their beliefs to be educated about, the true nature of prohibition laws. Time and again, against all evidence, they act as if these laws are an appropriate and effective use of power to advance their pet agenda.

From the right, that often connects to a desire to use power to coerce people into acting in an arbitrarily “moral” manner, whereas from the left, it more often stems from an ironically paternalistic belief that some people (prostitutes, drug users) are incapable of making decisions for themselves and therefore must be coerced for their own good.

Not only are both extremes completely and offensively wrong from a humanistic standpoint, they are wrong practically as well.

Prohibition doesn’t save lives. It ruins them.