War on Drugs Shifts to War on mar1juana

War on Drugs Shifts to War on mar1juana
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/385/shifted.shtml

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A study of FBI arrest and conviction data by a Washington think-tank has underscored a dramatic shift in US drug policy in the decade of the 1990s. "The War on mar1juana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs,", released Tuesday by the Sentencing Project, reports that from 1992 to 2002, the proportion of drug arrests involving mar1juana increased from 28% to 45% of all drug arrests, while arrests for the much more dangerous cocaine and heroin decreased from more than half of all drug arrests to less than 30%.

After crusades against heroin in the 1970s and crack cocaine in the 1980s, total drug arrests continued to spiral upward from 1.1 million in 1990 to more than 1.5 million per year in 2002. mar1juana arrests accounted for more than 80% of the increase, the report found.

The massive attention to mar1juana should be cause for a reevaluation of the nation's drug policy, said Sentencing Project research associate and study coauthor Ryan King. "In reality, the war on drugs as pursued in the 1990s was to a large degree a war on mar1juana," he told the Washington Post. "mar1juana is the most widely used illegal substance, but that doesn't explain this level of growth over time... The question is, is this really where we want to be spending all our money?"

For King and coauthor Marc Mauer, the answer is clear. Although mar1juana law enforcement costs were pegged at $4 billion annually, "What is empirically evident is that the growth in mar1juana arrests over the 1990s has not led to a decrease in use or availability, nor an increase in cost," they wrote in the report's conclusion. "Meanwhile, billions are being spent nationally on the apprehension and processing of mar1juana arrestees with no demonstrable impact on the use of mar1juana itself, or any general reduction in other criminal behavior. Our analysis of criminal justice processing of mar1juana use over the 1990s suggests that the contemporary approach is apportioning resources inefficiently at each stage of the system."

While all the mar1juana arrests had no noticeable impact on price, availability, or use levels, they had a disproportionate impact on the African-American community. Although blacks constitute only 14% of mar1juana users, they made up 30% of all mar1juana arrests, the report noted. In part, that is because police know if they want to make an easy drug arrest, they go to densely populated minority neighborhoods where drug dealing and use take place in known locations in the open.

Where current drug policies do excel is in creating a legion of people with criminal records that will make the rest of their lives more difficult. So far this decade, people have been picked up (or added to) arrest records for mar1juana possession at a rate of more than 600,000 a year.

Although only 6% of mar1juana arrestees were charged with felonies, some 27,000 pot criminals were serving prison sentences in 2002, giving the lie to the oft-repeated claim by law-and-order types that "nobody goes to prison for mar1juana." In fact, the study found, more than 6,600 people, or nearly one-quarter of imprisoned mar1juana offenders, were doing prison time simply for possession, and apparently doing prison time simply for possession. (The Sentencing Project tables are ambiguous here; the 6,600 number includes those imprisoned for mar1juana whose charges included "No weapon, No importation, No manufacturing, No laundering, No distribution.") More than 11,000 of those imprisoned were first-time offenders.

Even though violent crime was declining throughout the period under study, the report found, mar1juana arrests were going through the roof. Since no similar spike in mar1juana use has been reported, "this growth is probably better understood as the result of selective law enforcement," the report noted. But rather than blame a grand conspiracy to "get" mar1juana smokers, the Sentencing Project pointed to a trend toward more aggressive policing, where mar1juana arrests often result from a traffic stop or a street frisk. The authors also pointed to institutionalized incentives for police departments to pursue drug crime, such as reaping the rewards of seizing assets.

Police and society may be paying an opportunity cost for the aggressive enforcement of mar1juana law, the study suggested. Law enforcement priorities are a zero-sum game, the authors wrote; more money for mar1juana law enforcement means less money for other law enforcement.

"The War on mar1juana" ends with some specific recommendations:

* Deprioritize mar1juana enforcement. "As has become policy in jurisdictions such as Seattle and Oakland, law enforcement agencies should categorize enforcement of mar1juana possession as a low priority so as to conserve police resources for more serious offenses."

* Stop arresting people for mar1juana under the "broken windows" school of policing. "mar1juana arrests in some cities have been justified on the premise that arresting people for mar1juana possession disrupts other, potentially more serious, behaviors. Such strategies result in substantially increased numbers of low-level mar1juana arrests, with little evidence that they are actually effective in suppressing other criminal behaviors. Further, they contribute to the mistrust of law enforcement, particularly in communities of color that have been disproportionately targeted by such practices."

* Drop the charges on low-level offenders. "Few mar1juana possession arrests result in any significant jail or prison time, yet they are cumulatively quite costly to the court system through the engagement of prosecutors, defense counsel, judges, and probation officers. Prosecutors should use their discretion in appropriate cases to drop charges and/or utilize community resources at the earliest possible stage of court proceedings in order to effect outcomes that represent a reasonable allocation of resources."

* Drop felony charges to misdemeanors. "In most states felony drug convictions carry a set of collateral consequences in addition to whatever punishment is directly imposed. These may include a ban on receipt of welfare benefits, prohibition on living in public housing, loss of student loans, and loss of the right to vote. These punishments place additional burdens on ex-offenders attempting to reenter the community. Therefore, to the extent that the interests of justice can be served through a misdemeanor conviction rather than a felony, prosecutors should use their charging discretion to pursue such outcomes."

* Encourage the debate on mar1juana policy. "National debate on drug issues has too often been characterized by "soundbites" that distort the policy issues under consideration. In the case of mar1juana, proposals for decriminalization represent an alternative approach to current policy. Consideration o
f such options should be addressed in the context of the findings of this report, including the substantial criminal justice and social costs involved in the large-scale prosecution of mar1juana offenders. National debate on mar1juana policy, and drug policy generally, should be focused on the most effective ways of addressing substance abuse and the most efficient allocation of law enforcement resources."

* Federal government butt out. "The Federal government should defer to local governments to develop their own approaches to mar1juana use and respect the choices of state, county, and city policymakers. Federal funding should not be tied to a locality's decision to address mar1juana use in only one fashion, namely law enforcement; rather, it should also encourage and adequately fund alternative strategies. A number of cities have raised concerns about the emphatic prosecution of mar1juana as putting undue stress upon law enforcement resources, culminating in calls for and implementations of policy changes. The federal government should recognize these developments, and respect the choices of communities and local government agencies."

 

You are such an ignoramus.

 

I could easily and without question.

However, since you are such a dumba$$, I will respond to your idiotic ramblings once you prove to me that mar1juana is more dangerous than, and as such worthy of being prohibited over, alcohol.

Until then, shut the f*** up, moron and let the adults talk about serious issues.

 

As a taxpayer, I am pissed that I have to pay to enforce irresponsible, counterproductive laws that do more harm than good.

If it were true that it was more dangerous, how hard would it be for you to prove that mar1juana should be prohibited while alcohol is legal?

Engage in a reasonable debate by answering my question or go back to your nonsensical ramblings about the evil liberals.

 

Tell you what, Traitor_Jorge, I will post on the topic of which substance is more damaging first. You are welcome to continue to avoid the question, but if you do just expect insults and derision because that is all you will deserve at that point.

______________________________________________________

"mar1juana Is Safer" -- Reformers Take Up a New Refrain
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/385/newrefrain.shtml

Last month, students at two Colorado universities voted overwhelmingly in support of referenda urging their schools to equalize school penalties for mar1juana and alcohol infractions. That campaign was led by a group that argues frankly that mar1juana is safer than alcohol, Safe Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation, or SAFER. Earlier that same month, students at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, passed a similar resolution, and while the argument that mar1juana is safer than alcohol was not their main one, it was a prominent one. This weekend, people in cities around the country and the world will participate in the global mar1juana marches, and this year, organizers of that event's signature march in New York City are also playing the "mar1juana is safer" card.

It appears that a drug reform movement that has traditionally been uncomfortable with actually recommending that people use mar1juana instead of other, more harmful substances is taking a tiny step closer to embracing that position. And while one might expect a cautious response to such an approach, only a few yellow lights are blinking among reformers who spoke with DRCNet.

Ironically, the new tactic comes as drug czar John Walters' campaign to demonize mar1juana is taking on a shrill new intensity. This week, in the latest installment of the long-running, taxpayer-funded national media campaign against the weed, Walters charged that mar1juana use makes one more likely to suffer from mental illness. (See story this issue.)

But while Walters charges that mar1juana is a dangerous, dangerous drug, leading experts on the plant say it is far less harmful than alcohol. "Is mar1juana safer? The short answer is 'yes,'" said Dr. Mitch Earleywine, a University of Southern California psychologist who is the author of "Understanding mar1juana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence" and the just published "Mind-Altering Drugs: The Science of Subjective Experience." The evidence is clear, he told DRCNet. "Cannabis has no lethal dose, so you can't die from it. The impact on the brain structure for cannabis is nil, but there can be very serious brain function changes with alcohol abuse. Also, more dramatic liver functions are impaired with alcohol. Malnutrition, B-vitamin deficiency, and Korsakoff's Disorder are all linked to alcohol, but not cannabis."

The "mar1juana is safer" argument went over big at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where student referenda based on it won by 86% and 65% respectively, said Mason Tvert, director of SAFER. "It was very effective," he said. "There is a large population of people who are dramatically affected by both substances. Alcohol is harmful to them in itself, while mar1juana is harmful because of the penalties, and this was a situation where it was clear that alcohol was doing harm," he said, referring to various alcohol-related scandals including the deaths of five Colorado college students in the fall semester. "And in the university setting, people were open to it because they are far more worried about a student who is drunk than one who is using mar1juana."

At Appalachian State University, while the "mar1juana is safer" argument was not the central one in a student senate resolution calling for the equalization of university alcohol and mar1juana penalties, activists made ample use it. "We did play it up, and I think it was a useful tactic, particularly because our school has had a lot of alcohol-related tragedies in the past few years," said Ian Mance, ASU ACLU co-president and a former Students for Sensible Drug Policy national board of directors member.

At Appalachian, the code of student conduct calls for a minimum penalty of probation, drug treatment, and drug testing for a first mar1juana offense, while first offense alcohol violators face only a less severe form of probation. One other difference in penalties was particularly grievous to students: For mar1juana violations, the school would notify students' parents -- even if the students were legal adults -- while for alcohol violations, it would not until a second offense.

That was the main motivation for the resolution, said Mance. "We were picked as an experimental school in a statewide study of reducing student alcohol use because we've had a lot of alcohol-related deaths, yet we have the most extreme school policy in the state when it comes to mar1juana," he said. "This is the Deep South. People get emotional about drug use here, and when parents are called and told their college-age children are using mar1juana, they tend to lose it. This has caused some real problems for some students. For us, it is fundamentally a privacy issue. They do this even if you're an adult."

While student organizers have been making the comparison between mar1juana and alcohol, Dana Beal, chief organizer of the annual May global mar1juana marches now in their fourth decade, and his New York City march Saturday are emphasizing the comparison between pot and tobacco. (The march is also emphasizing the use of ibogaine as an addiction treatment and the use of hemp, Beal was quick to point out.) "Look, pot is less toxic than aspirin," Beal said. "The drug czar and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America have this big lie that a single joint contains 20 times more carcinogens than a cigarette; that smoking a joint is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes," he said. But according to Beal, nicotine, too, is a carcinogen, while cannabinoids block cancer. "People get cancer from chewing tobacco, but nobody ever got cancer from eating pot brownies," he argued.

"This is harm reduction," said Beal. "Harm reduction isn't just about clean needles; it's about what you put in those needles. People like to party; that's just part of human nature. The question is which substance is safer, and the answer is clear. We will say that mar1juana is safer -- we don't care how unpopular that may make us," he told DRCNet.

Maybe less unpopular than he thinks, at least among mar1juana reform activists. "Yes, we make the argument that mar1juana is safer," said Kris Krane, associate director of the National Organization for the Reform of mar1juana Laws. "If you look at the scientific research, mar1juana is clearly safer than alcohol and there are far fewer negative health effects, particular with a vaporizer. If we recognize the harms and dangers associated with alcohol, but are still willing to tax and regulate it, we should do the same thing with mar1juana," he told DRCNet. "We are not pro-mar1juana, but anti-prohibition. With alcohol Prohibition, we saw how policy only exacerbated the harms of alcohol and the alcohol trade. Clearly, we see the same thing going on with mar1juana prohibition."

"We have certainly been discussing this internally," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the mar1juana Policy Project, "and we are being a little bit more forthcoming about talking about this. We've all had a certain unease about seeming to be 'pro-pot' and our position has always been that we are not advocating that people use anything, only that we have laws that make more sense. But we have been grappling with this huge effort to demonize mar1juana, and a lot of us have come to feel there is a need to counter that propaganda. Not to be pro-pot, but to be pro-truth," he told DRCNet.

"The fact is, all drugs have risks," Mirken said, "but in any number of measurable ways, mar1juana is clearly less dangerous than a lot of other substances, including tobacco and alcohol. It doesn't make you an advocate of pot-smoking to say that in the grand scheme of things, mar1juana ranks pretty low on the danger scale. We're not saying 12-year-olds should go out and get stoned, but do you want your teens convinced that pot use is bad but it's okay to go out and pop some Vicodin?"

"I can understand how people could be nervous that we are seen as advocating or promoting the use of substances -- we don't want to do that," Mirken said. "But we have to be pro-truth, pro-science, pro-facts, and we have to be accurate. We have the government taking out ads telling parents explicitly that they should be more worried about a young person taking a few puffs of mar1juana than getting addicted to tobacco. That's just crazy!"

"The 'mar1juana is safer' message seems to resonate in places like Boulder, where it appears that alcohol abuse is rampant," said Tom Angell, communications director for SSDP. "It seems like it's something people on the ground can identify with, and those SAFER people have great organizing skills and know how to motivate students. But the question we have to ask ourselves as drug reformers is will this message work elsewhere?" he told DRCNet.

"Will it work on other campuses? Will it work with parents, administrators, legislators?" Angell asked. "We don't have an answer for that, and that is an important discussion we as a reform movement need to have."

It hasn't worked so far with administrators in Colorado or North Carolina. But the efforts at both schools are young and may yet bear fruit. "I just met with the vice chancellor of student affairs at Boulder," reported SAFER's Tvert. "He is going to look some more at the facts about arrests and suspensions, and we are trying to encourage the university to hold public hearings next school year. We're not going away."

And then there is the third rail of drug reform: actually slipping over the line into promoting or encouraging drug use. "Does the 'mar1juana is safer' message encourage mar1juana use?" asked Angell. "Does it condemn alcohol use? We at SSDP don't encourage or condemn drug use, and we don't encourage or discourage one drug over another. We're not scientists or pharmacologists; we look at policies."

"We do get accused of encouraging drug use," Tvert conceded, "but we don't encourage the use of mar1juana -- just policies that make sense. Still, if kids are smoking pot instead of drinking, they're causing themselves far less harm."

 

So now you are asking for an "ideal world?"

We have found, through hard won experience, that no matter the punishment, no matter the consequence, no matter the stigma, that some people will choose to use drugs. This was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt during the 1920s and 1930s, when alcohol prohibition actually caused alcohol use to INCREASE. Despite this experience and this set of proven facts, our government continued its Quixotic battle against alcohol for over a decade and has now continued a battle just as Quixotic against drugs for nearly a century.

The "high price" this country pays is directly due to the politicians and citizens who ignore facts and charge that drug users are at fault because we do not live in the "ideal world" that they envision.

The "high price" that this country pays is a direct result of a policy that ensures that our young people will have easy access to dangerous chemicals since the black market does not limit access to children.

The "high price" we pay is due to the fact that the only thing that prohibition does is exacerbate the harms involved in the drug trade.

The highest price that we pay is in our inability to simply be honest with our children with regards to drug use and abuse.

 

The available evidence belies this statement.

That is really the key. Abuse of ANY drug causes various and sundry problems, none of which are desirable. The problem is when the government proclaims that ANY use of certain drugs is inherantly abuse.

Personally, I had enough experience with cocaine to tell you that I cannot use that substance. However, I know people who can. I have a very good friend who can go out to a club, do a rail or two, and not use it again for six months or a year. He is a professional engineer, has never experienced job trouble, family trouble, or any other sort of issues that some people have with drug use.

Why should it be illegal for him to use a drug simply because people like me cannot?

Drug use and abuse should be a healthcare and education issue, not one for the criminal justice system to deal with.

 

At least your brother attempted to make an intelligent point, something you are apparently unable or unwilling to do. Either way, you are not worth my time, particularly since my answer to your brother struck directly at the query you posed. Oh, that's right, they gave up on teaching reading comprehension at Rice or at least so it would seem by your skills.

Engage in a reasoned debate or, in the words of Eric Cartman, suck my balls.