Drug WarRant

That’s the mantra we hear over and over from the apologists for bad policy like Kevin Sabet and Keith Humphreys.

Of course, this argument has so many holes in it you could drive a SWAT team through it.

• Most marijuana cases are handled at the city or state level, not federal local level, so federal prison isn’t relevant [nor is state].
• Possession is an extremely imprecise term. If you possess enough so you don’t have to go to a criminal dealer every week, you’re considered a criminal dealer yourself, and if the small amount you posses happens to have roots attached to it, you’re a kingpin.
• The larger argument that this statement is part of (the status quo just needs some tweaking) assumes that the way to fix a bad law is to simply convince authorities to enforce it less stringently, which is bad policy and ends up turning our justice system into some kind of nationally sanctioned Russian roulette. (Who gets caught and has their life ruined and who gets to be President?)

Additionally, you don’t have to go to jail to have your life ruined, as thousands upon thousands can attest.

Harmandeep Singh Boparai has an outstanding article: America: What’s more harmful, pot use or incarceration? in the Alaska Dispatch.

In it, he talks about lots of real life people where a simple arrest with no jail time for marijuana possession has callously and thoughtlessly ruined lives.

Definitely worth reading. Preferably by those who mindlessly chant the title to this blog post.

A couple of days ago, I tweeted the following:

.@RafaelONDCP @ONDCP @KevinSabet What do you propose for majority of non-problematic marijuana users? Arrest? Mandatory treatment? Other?

Naturally, I got no response.

And this is one of the most glaring problems with the third-way-ers. Sure, the notion of treatment instead of jail for those who need treatment is a good one. But that doesn’t let you off the hook for the vast majority who don’t need treatment and who are damaged by arrest more than the drug use.

You seem to want us to believe that your policy talents are so limited that you are incapable of crafting policy and law that is narrowly tailored.

Well, then, step aside and let some people take over who can.

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Note: Just as a reminder, this post is only talking about the demand side. The third-way-ers also have a huge blind spot when it comes to the supply-side devastation we face throughout the world.

It was just a few days ago that I put forth my Open letter to marijuana prohibitionists and so-called third-way-ers and said:

Correlation and Causation are two different words.

Get this one right. There are millions of people who use and have used marijuana, so there’s bound to be some strong correlations out there. Correlations are interesting, and may be a reason to do further study, but generally, they are not, of themselves, a reason to act.

For example, marijuana use has been linked to Nobel Prizes, the U.S. Presidency, and Olympic Gold Medals. That doesn’t mean that marijuana use is going to cause you to get any of those things.

But yesterday, all over twitter and the media, the drug czar and his assistants havee been screaming at the top of their lungs about the link between drugs and crime.

In the manner typical of the ONDCP, they talk about it in such a way as to strongly imply causation, pushing the media to act as their patsies (and there are still a few who are happy to do so).

Mike Riggs does a good job of responding with Drug Czar Report on Crime and Drug Use Is Really a Report About Being Poor and Getting Caught

WASHINGTON — Marijuana is the drug most often linked to crime in the United States, the U.S. drug czar said Thursday, dismissing calls for legalization as a “bumper-sticker approach” that should be avoided.

Gil Kerlikowske, the White House director of national drug-control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime. Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, Calif., last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug. Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested.

We’re going to see versions of this story everywhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw most of them written up the way McClatchy’s was, which is to say, without any indication that reporter Rob Hotakainen actually read the 2012 Annual Report on the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program II (or ADAM II in ONDCP shorthand), which is 122 pages long–far too long for Hotakainen to have examined it before firing off a dispatch about Kerlikowske’s speech. And yet, reading the report is the only way to tell whether Kerlikowske is spinning the results. (He is.)

It was interesting seeing communications director Raphael LeMaitre on Twitter promoting the drug/crime link, but he wasn’t getting away with it there.

Still, you can bet that we’re going to continue to get this kind of activity from the Drug Czar. Anything (including blatantly dishonest implying) to get the public worried about legalization. “Look — drugs and crime!”

Marijuana: The Next Diabetes Drug?”

Toking up may help marijuana users to stay slim and lower their risk of developing diabetes, according to the latest study, which suggests that cannabis compounds may help in controlling blood sugar.

Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not

Retro Report tells the story of the epidemic that wasn’t through firsthand accounts by some of those at the center of things: the researcher who put out the alarm, a pediatric expert who originally cast doubt on his findings and one of the original cocaine-exposed research subjects, a young woman whose life helped disprove the myth of what these infants would become.

Organization of American States launches groundbreaking drug policy report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs

Drug policy reform has been a taboo issue for decades – but for the first time representatives from 34 countries across the Americas have had the courage to break that taboo and envision real alternatives to the war on drugs. It is a clear acknowledgement that the global prohibition has failed to deliver what was promised and that a range of alternatives should be meaningfully explored.

How to Legalize Pot (Bill Keller, NY Times)

The marijuana debate has entered a new stage. Today the most interesting and important question is no longer whether marijuana will be legalized — eventually, bit by bit, it will be — but how.

Honduran victims of US drug war still await justice

One year later, the exact role that the DEA agents played in the deaths of Juana Jackson, Candelaria Trapp Nelson, Emerson Martinez and Hasked Brooks Wood remains unclear. The US government has never conducted an independent investigation into the incident, and has obstructed the Honduran investigation by denying the investigators access to either the ten DEA agents involved or their weapons.

Marijuana By Itself Not a Significant Factor in Fatal and Injury Crashes in 2012

New Times’ findings, based on a records request satisfied by DPS this week, jibe with statistics we reported earlier this month in our feature article about Arizona’s zero-tolerance marijuana-DUI law (link below). Drivers suspected of impairment in crashes that hurt or killed people in Phoenix, Chandler, and Scottsdale were rarely found to be impaired by marijuana, our earlier research showed.

Time to overturn the 1971 drugs law (Richard Branson)

If the war on drugs were a business, we’d have shut it down immediately. Current drug policies are counter-productive, and we need to think seriously about new policies that will deliver good value for money.

Quotable:

If you haven’t got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need.

If you’ve got a problem with your drug use then getting arrested and prosecuted is the last thing you need.

— @TomCLloyd

Dear sons of SAM and daughters of the American prohibition; to all the treatment industry, drug testing, private prison, and sheriff union lobbyists; and, of course, to our friends who are required by law to lie:

I keep hearing from your side that you have noble motives for your opposition to marijuana legalization. I hear that all you care about is using scientific inquiry to determine what is best for the people.

However, I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but you keep talking about things in ways that aren’t scientific, or that are meaningless without the proper context.

That kind of thing may have worked once, but in general, people are a little more sophisticated about scientific knowledge — they no longer uncritically accept “Here be dragons” for cartography or “If she floats, she’s a witch” as a judicial system.

Here are just a few of the danger signs that you may be mis-using or underutilizing scientific rigor in your discussions about marijuana legalization.

1. The invisible “user.”

You can’t discuss policy that affects all marijuana users by leaving out the actual category of marijuana users. When you discuss marijuana policy by saying we should treat instead of jail, then you’re completely ignoring the largest population — those who need neither. It’s like discussing whether to jail or require sexual assault treatment for all those who have sex — simply absurd.

2. The marijuana “addict.”

When you toss out the word “addictive” (and you do so very often), realize that the word is meaningless by itself. People talk about being addicted to Facebook, chocolate, and “Doctor Who” (what do you mean I have to wait until November 23?). Not even the top professionals in the mental health field can agree on its definition.

So if you’re going to use it, you need to put it in context, and the best way to do that is to compare with familiar things to the public, such as legal drugs like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. How do they compare in terms of likelihood of dependence, severity of dependence and severity of withdrawal effects? Without putting that in perspective, your use of “addictive” has absolutely no science in it at all.

Oh, and if you’re going to claim (or infer) that legalization will result in a percentage increase of “addicts” equal to the percentage increase of use, then you’d better be prepared to show some hard proof, since it’s clear that marijuana prohibition is more likely to deter casual users.

3. Scary “Carcinogens”

Don’t even think about using the word “carcinogens,” unless you’re ready to discuss the science of carcinogens and how much of our ordinary life contains carcinogens, including the air we breathe. Additionally, if you’re going to even inferentially talk about cancer and marijuana, you’d better not leave out the reams of scientific evidence that proves anti-cancer properties of marijuana.

You completely betray your claimed interest in science and the well-being of people when you cherry-pick really bad studies (like that New Zealand one) to try to declare that the outcome is still uncertain about whether marijuana causes cancer. Real scientists have done systematic reviews that include even those flawed studies and still concluded that marijuana doesn’t cause cancer.

The tragedy is that we’re spending time debunking false claims of marijuana causing cancer which distracts us from the important scientific work of learning more about how marijuana could be used to prevent or heal cancer.

4. Health concern du jour

Over the course of my life drinking coffee was good for me, then bad for me, then merely OK, then bad for me, then good for me, and never once during that time was it made illegal.

When you hear about some little health thing about marijuana, you might want to get confirmation. After all, researchers are paid to try to find things wrong with marijuana, and sometimes do, even though the results are not reproducible. This should raise red flags in particular with a substance that has been in popular use for many decades. The key phrase to ask yourself is: “Where are the bodies?”

5. Cannabis behind the wheel

Are there additional dangers due to driving under the influence of marijuana? Sure, probably. But once again here, everything is relative. There are real additional dangers of driving after your girlfriend breaks up with you, or after you get chewed out by your boss at work. You can be less than 100% on the road for a thousand different reasons. So policy should be about real comparable dangers.

Compare the actual risks of driving under the influence of marijuana with the actual risks of driving under the influence of alcohol or fatigue. As part of this, look at a comparison of the actual ways in which driving is affected by marijuana, alcohol, or fatigue.

We never see anything regarding such comparisons from you. In fact, you never even mention fatigue as a significant factor in traffic accidents (even though it’s huge), nor is there any major national effort to arrest tired drivers.

This makes all you say about marijuana and driving very suspect.

6. Correlation and Causation are two different words.

Get this one right. There are millions of people who use and have used marijuana, so there’s bound to be some strong correlations out there. Correlations are interesting, and may be a reason to do further study, but generally, they are not, of themselves, a reason to act.

For example, marijuana use has been linked to Nobel Prizes, the U.S. Presidency, and Olympic Gold Medals. That doesn’t mean that marijuana use is going to cause you to get any of those things.

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So, that’s just six items. There are more, I’m sure, but if you’ll work on getting these correct, we’ll have a lot less disagreement.

A friend of mine who writes under the handle of “Occasionally Wrong” has a podcast that he uses whenever there’s a topic that makes him mad, and he invited me to join him on his newest episode: Am I Mad? Episode 7: It’s ok to admit the Drug War sucks.

We chatted for about 20 minutes about what happens after drug legalization, and another 20 minutes on the problems with political parties.

I really don’t like listening to my own voice, so I haven’t listened to it yet, but I had fun doing it.

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use…” – President Jimmy Carter to Congress, August 2, 1977.

The Drug Policy Alliance has created a new document; An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs: A Federal Legislative Guide

The report basically recognizes that after decades of incorporating the drug war into the very fabric of the federal government, the U.S. needs more than just an understanding that the drug war has failed, but it actually needs an exit strategy. The Drug Policy Alliance provides 75 concrete actions that could be taken to help the federal government exit this failed drug war.

Here are some examples:

• Eliminate abstinence-only zero tolerance policies.
• Make harm reduction a cornerstone of U.S. drug policy.
• Allow states to reform their drug policies without federal interference.
• Reform the 1961, 1971 and 1988 U.N. treaties on narcotics drugs and support the rights of other countries to set their own drug policies.
  Reform civil asset forfeiture laws.
• Limit the Drug Enforcement Administration’s authority over the practice of medicine.
• Restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals and people on parole and probation.
• Eliminate random, suspicionless drug testing of most federal employees and reform the Drug-Free Workplace Act.
• Sunset drug war programs.
• Eliminate or cut subsidies to local law enforcement agencies for drug enforcement activities.
• Prohibit federal agencies from undermining state marijuana laws.
• Repeal federal mandatory minimum sentencing.
• Reform federal provisions prohibiting people convicted of a drug law violation from accessing public housing, and prohibit federal housing authorities from punishing entire families for the action of one family member.
• Encourage and allow for the establishment of supervised injection facilities.

Of course, most of these on their own are totally insufficient to eliminate or even significantly reduce the harms of the drug war, but you’re looking at such a daunting task as dismantling the federal drug war machine, it helps to have a defined set of concrete steps that can be taken.

This is one useful document among many. The Exit Strategy doesn’t, for example, provide a look at how legalization might be structured. For that, we turn to Transform’s excellent After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation

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Speaking of legalization, thanks to Allan for providing us with a link to the draft regulations for selling marijuana in Washington State.

I think I got through about half of it before complete boredom set in (although there were a few light moments such as the example of a regulation-proper label for “Space Cakes”). I found myself wondering if they would be this exruciatingly, mind-numbingly detailed about the regulations for producing plutonium, and wanted to ask “Did anyone tell them this is just about pot?”

I thought for sure that nobody could top the idiocy of Steve Adelman who danced a jig around the possibilities of marijuana’s involvement in the Boston tragedy.

But here comes DuPont. Lessons from Boston bombings about marijuana, education

While Jahar’s marijuana use did not directly make him a terrorist, it closed the door to his dreams of being an engineer or physician and it opened the door to his suicidal violence

Really? And you know this… how? And yes, at first, I thought that DuPont had topped Adelman on the stupid scale. But no, it turns out it’s not stupdity after all. Remember that DuPont is in the drug testing business…

Human loss is particularly onerous if it is avoidable.

What if Jahar had been required to take drug tests to obtain and maintain a driver’s license? Might he have changed his behavior if faced with real and immediate certain consequences for his drug use? What about the tens of thousands of kids nationwide who are caught in similar drug-induced downward spirals? New technologies make minimally intrusive drug testing part of a practical approach to preventing and identifying drug problems early. Can our society afford to ignore the measures that are available to encourage young people to find positive drug-free directions for their lives?

Yes, that’s right. DuPont is telling lies and trading on those who died in Boston to promote drug testing to increase his own profits.

That’s as low as you can go.

In Mexico, restrictions on U.S. agents signal drug war shift

Peña Nieto’s decision to limit the ability of American agents to operate in Mexico has been met with dismay by U.S. law enforcement agencies, which left a heavy footprint under the previous administration of Felipe Calderon. They warn that intelligence sharing will suffer if they can no longer choose which Mexican force — the army, navy or federal police — to give sensitive information to; they’ve been instructed to now funnel everything through Mexico’s Interior Ministry instead.

The agents also caution that the personal relationships developed under Calderon will fray if they are no longer welcome to work side by side with trusted partners at sites such as the joint command centers where Americans helped spy on Mexican narcotics traffickers and direct operations against them.

Yeah, they don’t want to be bothered by little details like the fact that Mexico is a sovereign nation. They just want to run the drug war their own way and get their own Mexican agents working for them, rather than working for… Mexico.

The same is true here in the United States where the DEA for years has worked to undermine local and state government authority in the drug war through joint task forces and the so-called “equitable sharing” of forfeitures.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, this is quite a wonderful thing to see in Congress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yAcEH6ZbNwI