"When [President] Obama said pot wasn't more dangerous than alcohol, it was a huge
understatement: Statistically, alcohol is vastly more deadly. Yet media
portrayed his remarks as enormously controversial--judging his statement
by culture war rather than public health standards."
I find this so interesting, because it is pretty close to being exactly what I told my students in my drug war class. Alcohol kills about 88,000 people a year, not including people killed in alcohol-related car crashes, yet data from the CDC's Wonder program show that marijuana kills maybe 1.48 people per year.
Do the media accurately tell this story? See for yourself. Talk about embarrassing.
As someone who's been teaching and research drug policy for years, along with my great friend and colleague Renee Scherlen, I am pretty sure we've both said that no one knows for sure what would happen under a full legalization regime.
That is, if a drug like marijuana were to be legalized, we would not really be able to accurately predict what would happen to rates of drug use, drug abuse, illness, death, etc. But we suspect that use might go up in the short-term (as the drug is suddenly more available and thus easier to get), drug abuse would remain unchanged (because, in spite of government claims to the contrary, a drug like marijuana does not generally lead to abuse), and illness and death would decline (because people would be using a less dangerous drug than say, alcohol). We'd also expect use to eventually level off once the "newness" of legalization fades (but if it does not yet rates of alcohol use go down as people switch to pot, this would be a net gain since the former is much safer than the latter).
But the truth is, it would be an experiment. Call it the grand drug policy experiment.
We don't know what will happen.
And we told our students that this would probably not happen in the United States. And likely not in our lifetimes.
But now, finally, we're going to find out. In the United States, and in our lifetimes!
Because two states recently legalized marijuana. And now, finally, in spite of their claims that they oppose legalization of marijuana, ONDCP, President Obama, and the Justice Department will not interfere with this policy change.
Now legal and soon to be regulated and available to responsible adults ...
Just as you'd expect from a conservative president who respects states' rights as long as they don't deny people their Constitutional rights, Obama's Justice Department will only enforce federal law within the states that aim to reduce harm (including serious crime).
For example, DOJ will still prosecute individuals or entities to prevent:
the distribution of marijuana to minors;
revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels;
the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other illegal activity;
violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana
drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use;
growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on public lands;
preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.
But not for mere possession or use.
Just as it should be if you believe in liberty.
Now, let's see what happens in this grand experiment.
In a sign that business interests may trump Washington DC's obsession with marijuana prosecutions, a former Microsoft executive, Jamen Shively, is putting together a company to create the first national pot brand.
And Wall Street is interested.
So too are most Americans.
So you think this might be news everywhere ... but not yet.
That is what President Obama and White House drug czar (Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy) Gil Kerlikowske have said.
But today in Yahoo News, there is this story about an amazing pot bust in Chicago. So clearly, the war is over now, right?
CHICAGO (AP) — In Chicago,
a bustling urban metropolis where skyscrapers are as likely to sprout
up as anything a farmer might plant, someone decided there was just
enough room to grow something a little more organic: Marijuana.
The plants grew even taller than the tallest Chicago Bulls. However,
just days before the crop on a chunk of land the size of two football
fields would have been ready to harvest, a police officer and county
sheriff's deputy in a helicopter spotted it as they headed back to their
hangar about three miles away.
On Wednesday, a day after the
discovery of the largest marijuana farm anyone at the police department
can remember, officers became farmers for a day as they began to chop
down about 1,500 marijuana plants that police said could have earned the
growers as much as $10 million.
No arrests had been made as of Wednesday, and police were still
trying to determine who owns the property that housed the grow site on
the city's far South Side. But police said they were hopeful that
because of the size of the operation, informants or others might provide
tips about those involved, including a man seen running from the area
as the helicopter swooped low.
James O'Grady, the commander of the department's narcotics division,
said they've never seen anything like it before, in part because
Chicago's harsh winters mean growers have a lot less time to plant, grow
and harvest marijuana than their counterparts in less inclement places
such as California and Mexico. The bumper crop was likely planted in
spring, O'Grady said.
Add to that the urban sprawl:
there are few spots in Chicago where such an operation could go
unnoticed because of all the buildings, roads and residents. The growers
took pains to ensure their crop was largely hidden by a canopy of trees
and surrounding vegetation.
"Somebody put a lot of thought into it," O'Grady said. "But they probably didn't anticipate the helicopter."
Chicago Police Officer Stan
Kuprianczyk, a pilot, said police helicopters flew "over it all the
time," to and from their hangar, without spying the grow site. Yet
somehow, a number of factors came together to allow Cook County
Sheriff's Deputy Edward Graney to spot the plants.
"We had the right altitude, the right angle, the right sunlight, and I
happened to be glancing down," said Graney. He said he initially
spotted five plants or so through the trees before he asked Kuprianczyk
to circle around for a closer look.
"We just happened to be right over a small hole in the trees and we looked down," Kuprianczyk said.
They also happened to have the
right training, Graney said, explaining that just a few weeks earlier a
much smaller operation in suburban Chicago prompted them to fly over and
videotape the scene so they might be able to recognize marijuana if
they ever saw it from the air again.
So, by the time Graney spotted
the marijuana plants, which are a much brighter shade of green than the
surrounding vegetation, he had a pretty good idea what he was looking
at.
Superintendent Garry McCarthy,
whose officers are more used to intercepting shipments of marijuana
grown elsewhere or discovering hydroponic growing operations inside
buildings, said the discovery of the marijuana is significant in a
larger fight against street violence.
Those involved with narcotics,
whether it is marijuana, heroin or cocaine, purchase firearms with their
profits and have shown they're willing to use them to protect their
business, he said.
"That's where the violence comes in, the competition for the markets," he said.
Here is another example of how even local resources are being wasted on drug prohibition.
The title of the article is "Law-enforcement agencies smoke out marijuana plants in Watauga County."
Of course, there is not a single word about whether this impacts availability or use. And that is because it does not, as all the studies and available data clearly show.
There is also no word about how much of this stuff the police get to keep, including any revenue they find, ironically to fund more drug war.
A friend sent this to me and it is just too good to ignore.
Police search school with drug sniffing dogs, find nothing.
Sniffing dogs alert to car in parking lot.
Sniffing dogs find "an illegal substance was inside a vehicle."
Specifically: "Police found a marijuana joint in a fast-food bag on the passenger floorboard."
The owner of the car, an 18 year old female (an adult), is arrested and charged with possession. Not of fast food. Marijuana.
Now, clearly, marijuana is illegal and fast food is not.
But which substance is actually more dangerous? Which kills more people?
We have data on this by the way. Anyone want to try to find it?
Yet, police are arresting people for the relatively safe substance while ignoring the relatively dangerous one. And the mainstream media almost never question the logic of this policy.
I know, I know, police are "taking a bite out of crime."
Except these arrests literally make no difference in terms of drug use or drug availability.
A draft (your comments and suggestions are appreciated)
Drug Legalization Might Be the Answer
American drug control policy—the drug war— has been mired in failure for decades.
By any measure of policy evaluation, the drug war is a failure. First, it fails to meet its stated goals of reducing drug use and availability of drugs, sufficiently disrupting supplies so that prices increase and purity declines, and providing treatment to drug abusers.
In fact, drug use is not demonstrably lower under prohibition and is actually generally higher since the founding of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)—the primary federal agency of accountability in the drug war; this includes marijuana. Drugs are no less available and are in fact widely available (especially marijuana). Prices of drugs are not up and are in fact generally down (including marijuana). Purity of drugs is not down and in fact is generally up (including marijuana).
And the vast majority of people who need drug treatment do not get it. This is largely because spending on treatment has lagged far behind dollars spent on law enforcement, interdiction, and international spending.
Second, the costs of our nation’s drug control policy outweigh its meager benefits. There are of course the obvious financial costs; the official drug control budget is $15.5 billion, but this excludes tens of billions of dollars spent every year on efforts by police, courts, and correctional facilities supporting federal drug policy.
Consider these data. About 15% of all arrests and more than 30% of convictions in state courts are for drug offenses; more than 30% of sentences imposed by federal courts are for drug offenses; and drug offenders now make up 20% of all state prison inmates and an astounding 55% of federal prison inmates.
With no drug war, every bit of these resources allocated to criminal justice could be directed at more serious threats to our nation, things like violent crime and terrorism. This is simply a matter of priorities, so states might choose to improve education instead.
Other costs imposed by drug policy include what ONDCP calls “crimes associated with drug using lifestyle.” This is when drug using citizens come into contact with criminals operating in the black market, a fact of life under prohibition.
The drug war also empowers violent and even terrorist organizations; these groups are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Mexico just in the past few years.
Then there is racial bias, a shameful legacy of US drug control policy. Prisons are literally being built “on the backs of blacks.”
Finally, illness and deaths associated with drugs have consistently risen for the past three decades. Prohibition simply makes drug use less safe.
An alternative is legalization, whereby the criminal penalty for drug offenses is eliminated and drugs are legally available for adults. Under this approach, drugs can be regulated, assuring safer use.
There is no better drug to start with than marijuana, a relatively safe drug anyway.
Marijuana kills less than five people a year in the US according to the federal government, compared with about 80,000 for alcohol and 440,000 for tobacco. Further, the vast majority of people who use marijuana never have any serious health problems or move on to any other harder substance.
No one really knows what would happen under legalization. It would be an experiment. Yet, careful studies of the US and abroad make predictions reasonably certain.
Marijuana might become more available and used more, but strict regulation could greatly diminish this. And educational campaigns could discourage use by young people similar to tobacco.
And even if use went up, people would still be safer using marijuana than alcohol or tobacco.
We would simultaneously save billions of dollars and could even raise money though tax revenue, funds that are sorely needed, especially now.
I am a professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University; I teach and do research on national drug control policy.
I read your article about marijuana legalization and feel like you are doing a disservice to your readers.
First, I agree that young people should not smoke pot. And thus it should be a concern that marijuana use among young people is increasing (although it is clear from the evidence that marijuana is a safer choice
than alcohol; alcohol leads to the most psychopharmacological violence of all drugs among young people and also is responsible for the greatest share of antisocial behavior on college campuses).
Yet, it does not therefore logically follow that marijuana should be illegal for adults. We can in fact express the clearest of dissatisfaction and disapproval for young people using drugs while simultaneously allowing responsible adults the right to do so. It's a proven fact that if you treat teenagers like adults and they actually
are more likely to act like it.
Any policy, including drug prohibition, should be assessed in two ways:
1) Does it meet its goals?
2) Do its benefits outweigh its costs?
Any policy that meets its goals and offers benefits that outweigh its costs is a successful policy.
Drug prohibition does neither. There are dozens of books from people of all ideological perspectives that now show this so clearly. Some of that evidence can be found in my article here: Robinson, Matthew B.
(2010). Toward a More Useful National Drug Control Strategy. /Justice
Policy Journal/, 7(1), 1-49.
See article <http://www.cjcj.org/files/toward_a.pdf> (PDF Format)
Thus, legalization is a real alternative worthy of serious consideration. Frankly, it should not be ruled out so easily with terms like "smoke and mirrors." In fact, it has serious, even scholarly proponents, like myself and many others, who base their decisions on real evidence (and not just that offered by the DEA, who obviously has a vested interest in the status quo).
Obviously, no one knows what would happen if drugs like marijuana were legalized; it is a safe bet that we would benefit greatly overall (even if use went up, overall costs would still be substantially down).
I'd be happy to talk with you about this, especially if you are willing to write a follow-up piece that makes the opposite argument to promote critical thinking in your readers.
Sincerely,
Dr. Matt Robinson
And guess what? She's invited me to write a response where I get to argue the other side.
And that's why you should write letters to papers.
The day has finally come where I can see a valid point by Pat Robertson.
Just another voice of sanity about prohibition of marijuana.
List me the reasons you think marijuana should remain illegal and I will happily respond with all the facts you need to know to show you while you're probably wrong.
A majority of Americans now support legalization. California almost did it this year.
In 2012, as many as four states will vote on it again.
In the mean time, expect to see more of this as normal, everyday citizens tell the state, "No way will I convict someone for something as harmless as this.
