A time and place for drugs

What we are doing right now in this country is the second coming of Prohibition. IMO, if you support the way the war on drugs is being fought today, you are a prohibitionist.

 

Here is a brief run down of drug studies from the 1800's till the 1990's and their conclusions.

Indian Hemp Drugs Commission. mar1juana. 1893-94. (UK)
A seven volume, nearly 4,000 page report on the use of mar1juana in India by British and Indian experts who concluded, “the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use produces practically no ill effects.”

Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations. 1916-1929. (U.S.)
Recommended “no steps be taken by the Canal Zone authorities to prevent the sale or use of marihuana.”

Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction. Report. (The Rolleston Report), 1926. (UK)
Codified existing practices regarding the maintenance of addicts on heroin and morphine by doctors.

Mayor's Committee on Marihuana. The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, 1965. (U.S.)
Concluded mar1juana use was non-addictive, and did not lead to morphine, cocaine or heroin addiction.

Committee of the America Bar Association and American Medical Association on Narcotic Drugs. Drug Addiction: Crime or Disease? Interim and Final Reports. 1961. (U.S.)
Concluded drug addiction is a disease, not a crime; harsh criminal penalties are destructive; drug prohibition ought to be reexamined; and experiments should be conducted with British-style maintenance clinics for narcotic addicts.

Interdepartmental Committee. Drug Addiction. (The Brain Report), 1961. (UK)
Endorsed the Rolleston Committee's advice which recommended that doctors in the United Kingdom be allowed to treat addicts with maintenance doses of powerful drugs when it was deemed medically helpful to the patient.

Interdepartmental Committee. Drug Addiction, Second Report. (The Second Brain Report), 1965. (UK)
Made recommendations for the monitoring and licensing of doctors in the United Kingdom who prescribe maintenance doses of drugs.

Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence. Cannabis. (The Wooton Report), 1968. (UK)
Endorsed conclusions of the 1965 New York report which said mar1juana was non-addictive and did not lead to morphine, cocaine or heroin addiction. Also endorsed the conclusions of the Indian Hemp Commission.

Government of Canada, Commission of Inquiry. The Non-Medical Use of Drugs, Interim Report, (The Le Dain Report), 1970. (Canada)

Recommended serious consideration be given to decriminalization of mar1juana for personal use.

National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Drug Use in America: Problem in Perspective, 1973. (U.S.)
Appointed by President Nixon, it recommended possession of mar1juana for personal use be decriminalized.

National Research Council on the National Academy of Sciences, An Analysis of mar1juana Policy, 1982. (U.S.)
Recommended immediate decriminalization of mar1juana possession and suggested the United States experiment with allowing states to set up their own mar1juana controls, as is done with alcohol.

Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, AIDS and Drug Misuse, Part 1 1988, Part 2, 1989. (UK)
Concluded that “The spread of HIV is a greater danger to the individual and public health than drug misuse.” Supported a comprehensive health plan that promoted abstinence, but above all health and life
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Data from The Office of National Drug Control Policy said that the price of heroin has dropped from approx $3,200 in 1981 to approx $1,200 in 1995. The price of cocaine has similarly dropped from $275.12 per gram in 1981 to $94.52 in 1996. A kilogram of raw opium sells for $90 in Pakistan, but that same kilogram is worth $290,000 in the United States.

Since 1975, the federal government has been asking high school seniors how easy it is for them to obtain mar1juana. Adolescents' access to mar1juana has been virtually unchanged by the drug war. In 1975, 87% of youths said it was “very easy” or “fairly easy” to obtain mar1juana. Twenty-three years and millions of arrests later, 89.6% said it was easily obtained.

You also might find this quite enlightening, the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act passed by Congress http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer...xact/taxact.htm

 

"Just say no" is a simplistic message that only works while children are young, before they begin developing the ability to evaluate information. This message is effective only until age 10 or 11 depending on the child. This is also an approach that lumps ALL drugs in the same category, virtually guaranteeing that if a child tries pot and it doesn't kill them, they will discard ALL information they have gotten from authority figures regarding drugs.

"Wait for adulthood" (combined with a serious effort to reduce availability to teens as I described in another thread: http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63243) is an integrated message and approach. We reduce drug availability and begin telling our kids the truth about drugs and drug use. We give them actual data that jibes with the information that they get from other sources (mostly peers) so that when we tell them about mar1juana, we are not lumping it in the same category as heroin, because when we lump them in like that, the kids KNOW that we are lying. This is also an approach that would allow many of us to be more honest with our kids while still preaching abstinance until adulthood. For example, I could describe how much more successful I might be right now if I had not chosen to use some of the substances I used when I was a kid.

If we can get our kids to put off using drugs until adulthood, they will make much better decisions about WHICH drugs to use once they are fully educated adults.

 

I am not talking about giving leeway to kids, I am talking about giving leeway to adults. Kids need discipline and structure and I believe that those two things can go a long way towards keeping kids drug free. I believe that, far from romantic, my vision is a much more practical way to approach the issue of drugs and drug abuse. Before we had all these drug laws, very few people ended up with hardcore drug problems (I have actual statistics for Australia both before and after the War on Drugs hit them if you need me to dig them up) and almost NOBODY died as a result of recreational drug use.

The country you brought up, Holland has more liberal laws, but because of the UN treaties, they are precluded from changing their system of decriminalization to even better serve the public. Even so, they have half the rates of teen drug use that we do (I have those numbers too if you would like) . If we sit down and follow what scientists and healthcare professionals have been telling us for the last century, we can do better.

When any drug use WAS fine as long as you were a certain age, we did not have even close to the same problems we do now. The biggest difference is that now we have the technology to make it very difficult for kids to get drugs legally and extremely prohibitive and easy to track people who create a black market for kids.

Certainly all drug use is self destructive, but if an adult who is armed with the facts chooses to ingest those substances, why is it the government's place to prohibit that? If responsible adults choose a different intoxicant than you do, what gives government the right to invade their home, confiscate their things, and throw them in jail?

Exactly. Government cannot prevent everyone from harming themselves and it does need to prevent abuse. Prohibition, far from preventing abuse, actually encourages use by teenagers and the black market profits guarantee that drugs will always be available. We can prevent and treat abuse, we just can't do it while the criminal justice system is directly involved with every drug case. Once we can treat abusers as patients rather than criminals, the police can go back to catching the real bad guys.

 

Unfortunately, drugs have been a part of my life for quite some time. I have seen the drug war from virtually every angle, I have explored the evidence, and I have come to the conclusion that our current policy does not work and it wastes over $100 billion per year. I am a fiscal conservative and that disgusts me.

 

Not true. Under a regulated system, those costs could be borne by the drug users themselves in the form of taxes. In addition, safeguards could be put in place to alert doctors when usage levels are too high so that we nip abuse in the bud rather than letting it mutate into full blown addiction.

Certainly some drugs like mar1juana would come first, but if you look at the actual statistics for the number of people who were addicted as well as the numbers of people who died from drugs before we banned them, even hard drugs cause far fewer problems than prohibiting them does. One of the goals in my system would be to steer people to intoxicants that are relatively safe. The only way to do that is to regulate the entire market and do your steering in education sessions.

 

That one is pretty easy. Alcohol is much more toxic than a whole host of currently illegal drugs and has caused much more damage through history than all other drugs combined. Now, there are some drugs which can be more toxic than alcohol, particularly when ingested improperly or mixed with other substances, but alcohol remains the number one killer and had that title even when drugs were legal (in the 1800s).

 

The list of studies I cited was incomplete. Here is a recent study.

In Farewell Report, Syracuse Auditor Examines Drug War, Finds It Wanting 1/2/04
In a report issued Monday, outgoing Syracuse, New York, City Auditor Minch Lewis (http://www.minchlewis.com) detailed the fiscal impact of drug prohibition on city finances and concluded that strict enforcement of the drug laws was an ineffective and even counterproductive use of city funds. In what is the first such report on the impact of prohibition by a local elected official, Auditor Lewis called for the exploration of alternatives to the drug war status quo, including decriminalization, harm reduction programs, and effective prevention programs.

"It's just not working," said Lewis, referring to business as usual in the city's drug war. According to Lewis's report, nearly one-quarter of all arrests in the city are for drug offenses. "The police could arrest twice that many and it wouldn't solve the city's drug problem," he told DRCNet.

"Public safety is a big issue," he said, "and that's why we were looking at the police department. I was the city's auditor, so this started with the budget process," said Lewis, who retired -- forced out by term limits -- effective Thursday. "We were looking at the amount of money we were spending for police, which at about $34 million a year was second only to schools. So we asked the police what they actually accomplished with that $34 million," he told DRCNet. "They supplied us with very solid statistics -- calls for requests for service, incidents, arrests -- and we found out they were arresting about 28,000 people a year, and about one-quarter of them were drug-related. We had to ask if we arrest 7,000 people a year for drugs and nothing ever changes, is this policy working? The answer is no."

The report had not started out as an indictment of the drug war, said Lewis. But as the numbers came in, they showed twice as many arrests for drug crimes as for any other offense -- nearly one-third of them on mar1juana charges. "We started looking at statistics for the Police Department because public safety is so important," Lewis said. "But we were surprised to learn that twice as many people are arrested for drug-related incidents than for any other violation, and the violence in our neighborhoods is worse every year."

The report did not just rely on statistics, Lewis said. "I went to many neighborhood meetings and I listened to people and talked to people," Lewis said, "and they universally said they weren't that concerned about others using drugs at home. It was the violence associated with drug sales on street corners that concerned them. If we made those drugs available in some other fashion, well, I don't think we'd be spending $34 million a year to prevent people from smoking pot in their living rooms. Our policy today may be contributing to the violence, just as prohibition did for the last generation," Lewis said.

"The police are a little concerned, but this is not an attack on the police," Lewis clarified. "This is a question of public policy, and somebody has to ask the fundamental question: Why are these drugs illegal? When we talk about how we deal with this illegal drug or that one, we are dancing around the real question. We need to decriminalize drugs, and by that I don't mean legalizing them but dealing with them from the medical approach, not the criminal justice approach. We need to be talking about treatment on demand, and maybe making some drugs available through harm reduction programs. We need a different approach than locking people up."

"This is an important step," said Nicholas Eyle, cofounder and executive director of the upstate New York-based drug reform group ReconsiDer (http://www.reconsider.org). "This is the first time a city had done a report like this itself. There have been a handful of other reports on the impact of prohibition, such as the one Jeffrey Miron did on mar1juana in Massachusetts, but they've all been done by some professor somewhere -- not by an elected official," he told DRCNet.

And ReconsiDer deserves some credit for the report. "It was my idea," said Eyle, "we've been working on this for months. Minch is on the ReconsiDer advisory board; he started silently showing up at meetings and I guess he liked what he heard. We've spoken many times. As an elected official, he hadn't done much on the issue, but now that his term is ending, he decided he had to do something."

Both Lewis and Eyle are looking for the report to do more than just gather dust.

"The report recommends that the Common Council and the mayor look at alternatives to prohibition, including decriminalization, harm reduction programs, and prevention programs," Lewis said. "I hope the council will pick this up and hold hearings. I would also like to see a task force appointed -- the police department, county health officials, the housing authority, the board of education, and local nonprofits should all be involved," he said. "We need an alternative approach, something like the medical model," he added.

"Hearings are probably our next step," agreed Eyle. "If the mayor and the council decide to hold hearings, we will certainly testify. If they hesitate or balk, we will push them as best we can. Getting some press would help." Lewis held a Tuesday press conference announcing his report, but as of Thursday only the local Syracuse Post-Standard had run a story, under the headline "Auditor: Anti-Drug Tactics Flawed." "That's a start," said Eyle, "but this needs to be in the New York Times."

Whether the council will agree to hearings is an open question. "There is a brand new council now," said Lewis, "and this is an opportunity for them to address this issue. This and education are the two most critical issues facing the council, but at this point I don't have a commitment from any of the council members to move on this."

And even if the council did act, its powers are limited. But there is plenty the council could do, said Eyle. "This is a tremendous financial burden for the city, and the council could vote to make drug law enforcement the lowest priority just to keep the costs down," he said. "There is precedent for this in New York. During Alcohol Prohibition, the state legislature passed a bill that basically said it respected the right of the federal government to enforce the law, but New York didn't have the resources to deal with it. The city of Syracuse could do something similar," Eyle said.

Pressure is not coming only from outgoing Auditor Lewis and ReconsiDer. Black minister the Rev. Larry Ellis has formed a group called Families Against Injustice to protest the federal prosecution of young men from the city's heavily black south side who had already served time for the same crimes in the state system. In what is a rare step for a black religious leader, Ellis and the organization are calling for an end to drug prohibition. And they are bringing in nationally known figures, such as the Rev. Edwin Sanders, to spread the message to other local religious and community leaders.

For ReconsiDer's Eyle, the Lewis report is a vindication of the group's strategy of playing it straight. "We've always been very careful not to be labeled pro-drug," he explained. "As an organization, we do not say it's okay if your kids smoke dope -- no matter what we may feel privately. There are no pot leaves on our web site. We don't do rallies, we don't attract the stoners," he said.

"We have a conservative image, and that allows us to take very radical positions," Eyle continued. "As most drug reformers know, we're pretty comfortably in the drug legalization camp. We're clear about that. But we've been talking to people like the Rotary Clubs for years, and everyone in the movement said that was a waste of time. They were wrong. Hundreds of Rotarians are members of ReconsiDer, and so is Minch Lewis."

Visit http://www.reconsider.org to read the Syracuse City Auditor's "Report on Syracuse Police Activities for the Year Ended June 30, 2002" online. (Eyle promised Wednesday it will be up "very, very soon.")

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/318/syracuse.shtml

 

For those of you still in the pro-drug war camp, keep in mind that you will be caught on the wrong side in the history books once this debacle is fully recalled. We can band together to reform the system to find one that meets the needs of all Americans if we can get over our petty prejudices about drugs and drug users. This process is already starting here in the US.

Alaska mar1juana Legalization Initiative One Step from 2004 Ballot 1/2/04
An initiative that would legalize the possession, growing and sale of mar1juana has officially achieved the number of signatures necessary to be placed on the November 2004 election ballot. All that remains is for slow-moving state officials to certify the signatures.

Under an Alaska appeals court ruling in August, mar1juana possession by adults in the privacy of their homes is already legal. An initiative that would have legalized mar1juana and established a commission to study reparations for people arrested under the mar1juana laws mustered only 40% of the votes in the November 2000 election.

This time, the initiative's organizers, Free Hemp in Alaska, have been a little bit less ambitious. According to the measure's language, "Persons, 21 years or older, shall not be prosecuted, be denied any right or privilege, nor be subject to criminal or civil penalties for the possession, cultivation, distribution, or consumption of" hemp. The measure defines hemp broadly to include "hemp, cannabis, or mar1juana, or any part or preparation of the plant Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, Cannabis americana, or any species or variety of plant of the genus Cannabis."

Initiative organizers had had problems with the state official in charge of certifying initiatives, Lt. Gov. Loren Leman. A prominent foe of drug reform, Leman is known for leading a 1999 effort to undo the state's medical mar1juana law. In January 2003, Leman threw out hundreds of booklets filled with qualifying signatures, citing violations of state law. But in September, an appeals court judge ordered him to reinstate those booklets, calling the elections office run by Leman "a snake in the grass" and describing the signature-gathering errors as "trivial rules violations."

Late in November, Leman notified organizers that they had reached the 28,782 signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. His staff told the Juneau Empire this week that they expect certification to take place "within a couple of weeks."

Visit http://www.freehempinak.org to read the Alaska initiative online.