Science shows that drug criminalization has very little impact on cannabis use.

A good sized majority of the stories I post come from www.stopthedrugwar.com. If you would like to see weekly updates, they have a newsletter that comes out every Friday and they have archives for the past seven years along with research, statistics, and other pertinent information.

I will continue to make threads for the best ones, based on my responses here, but they do a better job of archiving all that stuff than I could, so that would be the web site to visit.

 

Not only that, but the science also shows that pot has very little effect on driving.


Newsbrief: Study Finds "No Increased Risk" for mar1juana-Using Drivers 5/14/04
Dutch researchers studying the association between drug use and traffic accidents have found "no increased risk" of accident-related trauma in drivers who have been using mar1juana. The finding comes amidst increasing controversy over "drugged driving" and the federal push to see zero-tolerance DUID (Driving Under the Influence of Drugs) laws passed nationwide (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/329/driving.shtml). Under federal model legislation, those laws would define drivers found with even traces of illicit drugs in their system as impaired -- without requiring any showing of actual impairment.

The study, which was conducted by scientists at the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands, reviewed the cases of 110 drivers hospitalized in traffic accidents, as well as an additional 816 control subjects selected at random as they drove down Dutch roads. All 926 subjects underwent blood or urine drug testing. The main objective of the study, wrote the authors, "was to estimate the association between psychoactive drug use and motor vehicle accidents requiring hospitalization." Researchers used the "odds ratio," or the likelihood that the use of single or multiple drugs would increase the odds of getting into a traffic accident requiring hospitalization.

Unsurprisingly, the study found that driving under the influence of alcohol dramatically increased the odds of getting in wreck. Even people who consumed less than the legal limit (those between 0.5% and 0.8% blood alcohol levels) had a five-fold increase in the risk of serious accident, while drivers above the US legal limit were 15 times more likely to get in bad wrecks. Likewise, drivers using benzodiazepines, such as Valium and Rohypnol, were five times more likely to smash up. And drivers using multi-drug or drug and alcohol combinations were also much more likely to have an accident requiring hospitalization.

For drivers using amphetamines, cocaine, or opiates, the researchers found some increased risk, but qualified it as "not statistically significant." And the pot-heads?

They didn't actually live up to the portrayal of them by the drug warriors as a highway menace. "There was no increased risk for road trauma found for drivers exposed to cannabis," is how the authors put it in their abstract.

The complete article, "Psychoactive substance use and the risk of motor vehicle accidents," published in the professional journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, is not available online unless you want to pay $30 to the publishers (http://www.sciencedirect.com), but an abstract is available at PubMed at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15094417

 

Science also shows that anti-drug ads are counterproductive. Duh.


Newsbrief: Anti-Drug Ads Pique Curiosity, Researcher Finds 5/14/04
The White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy's anti-drug media campaign is intended, at least ostensibly, to stop kids from using drugs. With the government spending about $200 million in taxpayer money annually and private enterprises kicking in a like amount, whether that campaign is working properly is a question worth asking. Now, once again, a researcher is suggesting that the campaign is having paradoxical effects.

Carson Wagner of the Department of Advertising at the University of Texas at Austin has conducted a number of experiments designed to test the impact of anti-drug ads using more sophisticated attitudinal measures than the self-reporting used in most research on the topic, the University of Texas announced this week.

"The majority of the current anti-drug advertising research is flawed because it relies on research participants self-reporting their attitudes in response to watching anti-drug ads," explained Wagner. "However, an immense body of research reveals that, due to their conspicuous nature, self-reported attitude measures are highly susceptible to social desirability, especially with regard to sensitive issues such as drugs."

In his most recent work, he studied the impact of edgy, gripping ads, such as those linking drug use with terrorism, and found surprising results: The more exciting the ad, the more the kids thought about drugs. "Keeping drugs on youths' agendas by using hard-hitting ads keeps them thinking about drugs," said Wagner. "And those same ads can motivate people to pay attention, which can result in lower anti-drug [attitudinal scores] as compared to watching ads that don't call attention."

That study won the Top Faculty Paper award for the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the largest and oldest mass communication academic organization, UT was proud to note

Based on his research, Wagner had some advice for anti-drug advertisers: Don't try so hard. "The conventional anti-drug advertising strategy has been to produce highly visible, attention-grabbing ads, most notably the campaign linking drug use and terrorism, and to place them at times when viewers are likely to be most attentive, for example, the Super Bowl," adds Wagner. "Although this may be an effective political strategy, it's less likely to achieve the goal of preventing illicit drug use."

No, but it makes great theater and provides many opportunities for parody.

Read an extensive feature article on Wagner and his work at http://www.utexas.edu/features/ online -- find the article in the archives when it is removed from the current feature page.

 

No kidding. I think this goes to show as true a hypothesis from my own "green days." When you are stoned, you are sooooo paranoid that you tend to be the model driver because you are hyper attentive to every little thing.

As I have mentioned before, there is a breathalyzer for mar1juana already and were pot regulated, I think we should study to find out at what level driving is negatively impacted by mar1juana and DUI should be extended to cover it (and any other drug for that matter). You should not use any drug and drive, but that goes without saying.

 

Newshawk: Dale Gieringer
Tracknum: 276091084466063
Pubdate: Thu, 13 May 2004
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Webpage:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040513/news_lz4e13bandow.html
Copyright: 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact: letters@uniontrib.com
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Author: Doug Bandow
Note: Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and James Madison Scholar with the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis - Popular)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/War+on+Drugs

WHICH SIDE IS WINNING WAR ON DRUGS?

The war on drugs is going badly.

The current and previous presidents of the United States used mar1juana. So has presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to drug use. Radio host Rush Limbaugh, who once beat the drums for jailing white junkies, has been through drug treatment.

Some 75,000 Californians now use mar1juana under a doctor's care. The U.S.
Supreme Court let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling barring Uncle Sam from punishing doctors who prescribe medical mar1juana under state law.

The same 9th Circuit Court in California has allowed defendants to introduce evidence that they were growing mar1juana for medical purposes.
San Francisco is considering creating nonprofit mar1juana cooperatives.

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, a Republican, signed legislation slashing the punishment for medical use of mar1juana. Connecticut is moving to legalize medical pot.

A state court recently affirmed the constitutional right of Alaskans to grow mar1juana at home. Alaskans will vote this year on an initiative to legalize personal pot use.

The Netherlands allows personal possession and cannabis coffee shops. Spain no longer arrests recreational users; Portugal and Luxembourg have decriminalized mar1juana consumption.

Belgium permits the medical use of mar1juana and is considering allowing citizens to grow small amounts of pot. Local authorities in France and Germany decide whether to arrest cannabis users.

In Britain, most pot users are now warned rather than arrested. A police chief has called for legalizing heroin. The British Department of Health is nearing final approval of a mar1juana inhaler for medical purposes.

Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland all are debating relaxing their mar1juana laws. Canada provides mar1juana through its health-care program, plans to make pot available in pharmacies and has proposed to decriminalize pot consumption.

Why toss pot smokers in jail while tolerating use of alcohol and cigarettes? People should abstain from all of them, but they should not be imprisoned if they do not.

Some of Limbaugh's conservative defenders argued that an addiction arising from an illness deserved special dispensation. If so, people using mar1juana as medicine also warrant compassionate treatment.

For instance, Angel McClary Raich of Oakland smokes mar1juana to combat nausea resulting from her treatment for brain cancer.

"The alternatives have been ineffective or result in intolerable side effects," says her physician, Dr. Frank Lucido.

Teddy Hiteman of Henderson, Nev., suffers from multiple sclerosis.

"Medicinal pot has been a godsend," she says.

Michael Ferrucci of Livermore has lung and testicular cancer. mar1juana "has been far more beneficial to me than other medications they have recommended to me," he says.

The American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs has reported that "anecdotal, survey, and clinical data" demonstrate mar1juana's medical usefulness. The National Institutes of Health stated that "mar1juana looks promising enough to recommend that there be new controlled studies done."

Groups ranging from the American Cancer Society to Kaiser Permanente support access to or research on medical mar1juana.

In one survey, more than 70 percent of American cancer specialists said they would prescribe mar1juana if it was legal. A poll of the British Medical Association yielded similar results.

The New England Journal of Medicine has backed access to medical mar1juana.
Last year, the British medical magazine Lancet Neurology pointed out that mar1juana had proved effective against pain in lab tests and could become "the aspirin of the 21st century." A recent issue of The Harvard Brain journal reported: "Cannabis may also slow down the neurodegenerative processes that ultimately lead to chronic disability in multiple sclerosis and probably other diseases."

Allowing the medical use of mar1juana doesn't even prevent the government from punishing recreational users. The General Accounting Office concluded "that medical mar1juana laws have had little impact on their law enforcement activities."

Candidate George W. Bush said, "I believe each state can choose" what to do about medical mar1juana. But under President Bush, reports Dean Murphy of The New York Times: "Federal agents have raided farms where medicinal mar1juana is grown, closed cooperatives where it is distributed and threatened to punish doctors who discussed it with their patients."

Sadly, drug warriors are more interested in punishing drug users who threaten no one than in aiding the sick and dying.

The drug war has failed. The drug laws pose a far greater threat to public health and safety than does drug abuse. Drug use should be treated as a medical and moral issue, not a criminal one.

 

Dear friends,

Please find herewith the report on the presence of ENCOD at the EU Summit on Drugs in Dublin, Ireland.

Any comments or questions on this report are wellcome. You may also distribute it as broadly as possible.

Best wishes,
Joep


THE HARD WAY FORWARD TO ANOTHER DRUG POLICY

The following is a summary of the experiences of a representative of the European NGO Council on Drug Policy while attending the conference called “The Way Forward”, on a new European Union strategy on illicit drugs, which was held in the Hotel Conrad, Dublin, Ireland, on 10 and 11 May, 2004.


My presence at the Conference followed an invitation of the organisers (Irish government, current EU-presidency together with the Dutch government, the next EU -presidency) to inform about the position of European NGO’s working on drugs issues. The result was that some governments re-acted on this presence as if I had come to open the box of Pandora…

The audience consisted of about 200 people: mostly civil servants from all the 25 EU Member States, some from candidate countries Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey, some representatives of European Institutions (European Commission, Europol, European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction EMCDDA, Council of Europe), some observers from third governments (Norway, United States) and two NGO representatives (TNI and ENCOD).

The conference was meant to draw the first global guidelines for the next EU Drug Strategy (2005 - 2012) and Action Plan (2005-2008) which has to be designed during Autumn of 2004 and finally approved in the springtime of 2005.

I was asked to participate in a plenary panel session on Monday morning, just after the opening speeches. This panel consisted of four people: one representative of the UK police, two Irish doctors and me. I was the only panel member to propose a fundamental change of logic in drug policy, with which I referred to the need to start creating political ‘room for manoevre’ for policies that are not based on prohibition. We all had about
6 minutes to speak during the entire panel session.

The panel discussion also contained the screening of a video film in which
8 people were interviewed. They were Tomas Zabranski (Czech expert), Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt (UK activist), Mike Trace (UK expert), Ian Oliver (UNDCP consultant), Jan van der Tas (NL activist), David Liddell (UK harm reduction), Danny Kushlick (UK activist) and Krzysztof Krajewski (Polish expert). Every single person interviewed concluded with a call on the audience to work towards a review of existing policies.

After this the floor was opened to discussions and the first three governments to re-act (Belgium, Italy and Greece) immediately protested against my presence. The Belgian government even used the word “scandalised” to describe their feelings on my presentation and the content of the video, accusing the organisers to be extremely biased in their choice of speakers. They also felt scandalised by the fact that ENCOD had dared to use the EU symbol in our flyer which can be seen at http://encod.org/encod_lo-res.pdf

This incident influenced the entire conference. In the corridor, a lot of discussion was going on concerning the fact that our ideas had been allowed to enter the conference room.

After lunch, in the workshops that followed the plenary session, it was clear that some governments (especially Sweden, Italy, France and even
Germany) were quite outraged about the fact that the call for change in drug policies had been at the center of attention in the morning. This meant that in all the four workshops (Demand Reduction, Law Enforcement, Information & Evaluation and International Co-operation) several representatives acted with a high degree of Pavlov: every time the word harm reduction was mentioned, they would fly up and state that this could not be the objective of EU drug policy, which still had to be based on reduction of drug consumption etc.

Meanwhile, several representatives came to me and said that on a personal title, they agreed with lots of the things we were saying. Especially the representatives of the new EU Member States were very positive, saying that they did not agree with the Belgian representative. They said that from own experience, they knew all too well how ‘civil society’ is treated by authorities and that the future is ours.

Meanwhile the 100 copies of the statement I had with me (also presented on www.encod.org/warsaw.htm ) disappeared quite quickly from the information table. Also I had quite positive talks with delegates of the Irish, Dutch, Slovenian, Czech, Finnish, Cypriote, Slovak, Bulgarian and Hungarian, European Commission and Council of Europe delegations and even a constructive conversation with someone from the Swedish Ministry of Justice, who also said that he found the drug debate too dogmatic…


THE FIGHT FOR MONEY

What resulted clearly from the conference is that most governments are aware that in the 1990s, there has been a shift in drug policies from repression to harm reduction. They are of course aware that this shift has not been enough to solve the problems, and that a second shift is needed from harm reduction to legal regulation. But in order to do this, they need to have the tools to question the current approach within the law enforcement apparatus. And that is a problem, as the law enforcement lobby is well established.

In the workshop there was a lot of talking about the need to investigate and evaluate health related initiatives: prevention, treatment, new health hazards concerning ATS (Amphetamine Type Stimulants) and cannabis (French and Germany both highlighted the “increasing health problems of cannabis consumption), harm reduction initiatives and so on.

The conclusion of these talks was usually that the European Commission should invest more money, the EC then pointed at the EMCDDA, and the EMCDDA pointed again at the member states. Conclusion: we want research but others should pay for it.

This way, the participants escaped the real discussion: about the result of current policies on drug consumption (according to a Dutch researcher, there is virtually no impact at all from any kind of policies on drug consumption), about ways to use each other’s research results (for instance on heroin distribution in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Spain) and about other things that could be applied in order to save money in stead of investing more etc.

But also, there was virtually no talking at all about the need to evaluate law enforcement. Here the discussion went more in the direction of enlarging co-operation between European police forces, supporting Europol, and designing new action plans to “new threats” such as ATS production and trafficking. Again this would create the need to use more money (see above).

In personal conversations, one could feel however that even repressive governments (like Denmark and Sweden) do not have a real response to the argument that more law enforcement on drugs means more money to organised crime. They typically respond by saying that we do not have a proposal of how to do things in a post-prohibition system, and as long as we do not have answers to many questions on how such a system could function they will never take us serious…


THE LACK OF DIALOGUE

For someone from civil society, representing a large contingent of tax payers, it was quite astonishing to see that the participants at the event were not able to reach any kind of clear consensus on even the most minimal definitions on what should be considered as ideal outcomes of a new EU drug strategy. This was perhaps partly because the organisers had been a bit too ambitious in defining these objectives. Although it is remarkable to see how a formulation like “Improving the effectiveness and sustainability of drug prevention aimed at vulnerable young people and by increasing awareness about drug related risks through the dissemination of reliable information of high quality among young people in the age of 12 to 25” can already be considered as "too ambitious".

Mainly, the lack of results can be explained by the reluctance of certain governments (especially Sweden, Italy, Belgium, France and and interestingly enough, Germany) to enter in a real discussion. Their goal seemed mainly to sabotise the debate, to make sure no mention was made that would open the pandora box…

Of course this left a bitter aftertaste among all participants. In the closing remarks, Europol and EMCDDA representatives could make a final call for more money to do law enforcement and research. But the real question is if there will be room for further dialogue with civil society on the drug issue, as this dialogue seems to be the only way to close the box of pandora, that is: to obtain a real view on the harms of drug prohibition and start reducing them by reforming the policies.

But this dialogue is undoubtedly going to come. Especially the presence of the new Member states is interesting in this aspect. Still they are reluctant to join the discussion (as someone said: “they have taken a seat in the bus but do not try to come closer to the steering wheel”) also because they are used to obey orders (first from Moscow, now from Brussels), but if they do, it is quite sure that they will come with many questions, as they are aware of the difficulties that prohibition is bringing.

Also some kind of dialogue took place with the United States government. Its representative, called David Murray, already had been annoyed by the lack of receptiveness among participants for his ideas about how the EU should copy the succesfull approach of the US in drug law enforcement. But when the ENCOD-representative challenged the success of the US drug war and suggested that he was only defending it because that was his job, Mr. Murray responded literally: “That is an insult, you son of a b****”.

CONCLUSION

My conclusion of this conference is that the debate on drug policies is arriving to the EU forum. Prohibitionist governments are slowly becoming nervous at the direction the process is taking, and will do everything to block it. But they are also aware that they do not have any responses to some of our arguments, and some individual people among government apparatus are increasingly aware that they need to go into debate with us in order to find the true response.

It will now be very interesting to see how the reactions will be on the results of the evaluation of the current EU Action Plan (to be published in October 2004) and what the Dutch Presidency will do with those results in order to design the guidelines for the new strategy, which has to be concluded in December 2004. The first Action Plan 2005-2008 will then be adopted in the springtime of 2005.

ENCOD will surely follow this process and perhaps, if we get funding, organise an event to comment this EU strategic process with a broad range of NGO’s from all around Europe.





EUROPEAN NGO COUNCIL ON DRUG POLICY
Lange Lozanastraat 14
2018 Antwerpen
Belgium
Tel. 00 32 (0)3 237 7436
Fax. 00 32 (0)3 237 0225
E-mail:encod@glo.be
Website: www.encod.org

 

DaDakota tried to make this point once, and my counter is the same now as it was then: drug usage rates are pretty comparable across most societies despite criminalization, decriminalization, prescription availability, social norms, and virtually every other variable you can name. That is the point of this study. The telling tale is how much lower the drug usage rates by MINORS is in the Netherlands (basically half what it is here), where mar1juana at least has lost it's "forbidden fruit" aspect.

BTW, how many more miles of road are there in the US vs. the Netherlands? I would suspect that those road-miles have more to do with drunk driving rates than usage does. I am sure that they drink far more than we do per capita, but they, by and large, do not do as much driving as we do.

Of course this study by itself does not "prove" anything definitively, but it does lay the foundation for the bigger question of whether prohibition is a sustainable long-term policy. As you agree, there are plenty of sound reasons to consider pilot programs and experimentation with drug policy.

I would suggest that the federal government get out of drug policy with the exception of a research arm whose responsibility would be monitoring metrics for various drug policies. This data would be shared with the states so that we can, over the course of time, determine what policy works appropriately for each drug. The states can experiment with their own laws and the process will be a long, drawn out affair. Over time, we will learn what policies are effective at reducing use by minors and also reducing overall use of the most dangerous substances.

 

The stat might be accurate if it was expressed as a percentage of road-miles driven. If it is just drivers, I would be willing to bet that drivers in the US drive FAR more than drivers in the Netherlands every year.

Certainly there are differences in prevailing attitides and social norms, but as I mentioned before, percentage of drug users in a society is relatively flat no matter the drug law, social norm, or societal difference.

 

This is related as it is a scientific study of the effects of mar1juana. I thought it was interesting, so here goes.


Cannabis Improves Night Vision, Study Says

Missoula, MT: Administration of cannabis improves night vision in a dose-dependent manner, according to the findings of a case study to be published in the July issue of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.

Researchers administered oral THC to one individual; analogous field studies were performed on three separate subjects before and after smoking cannabis. All four subjects were field-tested for night vision with a Scotopic Sensitivity Tester-1.

"In both test situations, improvements in night vision measures were noted after THC or cannabis," authors found.

"The current study supports the previous ethnobotanical observations that cannabis may improve night vision," they concluded. "This effect seems to be dose-dependent and cannabinoid-mediated. Further study may reveal whether this clinical application of cannabis could be added to treatment of pain, spasticity of multiple sclerosis, and nausea of chemotherapy as recognized indications for this ancient substance."

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of the NORML Foundation at (202) 483-5500. Abstracts of the study are available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03788741

 

The big difference in Holland is their rates of drug use by minors which sit at about half what we see here in the US.

Good piece by Buckley.