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Drug WarRant
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Friday, May 14, 2004 |
More students' rights violated
From WTOP News:
CHESTERTOWN, Md. (AP) - Authorities entered an "unclear" legal area when they sent four dogs into the local high school for a drug search without a warrant, patted down 16 students and ordered two female students to partially disrobe, the Kent County sheriff said.
"We were acting under what we thought was probable cause, and we still believe there was probable cause," Sheriff John F. Price IV said Thursday of the search April 16.
"At the same time, it was an area that was unclear," Price told The (Baltimore) Sun. "We didn't know it was a gray area."
Ah, so as long as you are ignorant of people's rights, it's OK to violate them?
Sixteen students were subjected to "pat-down" searches, while the other two received what the sheriff would describe only as "more thorough searches."
One of the two, Heather Gore, 15, said Thursday that a female deputy ordered her to remove her skirt, then lifted her tank top, exposing her breasts. Gore said she was then told to spread her legs while the officer checked her underwear.
"I'm still just so embarrassed," Gore said.
Her mother, Patricia Gore, said she would push for a change in policy regarding searches.
"I certainly have a lot of things besides lawyers' fees I need to spend money on, but my daughter shouldn't have had to go through all this, and neither should anyone else," the mother said.
Maryland regulations bar police from searching a student unless the student is under arrest or believed to be concealing a weapon.
Additionally, the United States has a regulation in an apparently seldom read document called the constitution. It reads in part:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
10:25:20 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Thursday, May 13, 2004 |
Another study shows no link between marijuana and auto accidents
Drivers who test positive for marijuana in
their urine do not experience elevated risks for having a motor vehicle
accident, according to case-control data to be published in the July issue
of the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
From the abstract
The driving performance is easily impaired as a consequence of the use of alcohol and/or licit and illicit drugs. However, the role of drugs other than alcohol in motor vehicle accidents has not been well established. The objective of this study was to estimate the association between psychoactive drug use and motor vehicle accidents requiring hospitalisation.
A prospective observational case-control study was conducted in the Tilburg region of The Netherlands from May 2000 to August 2001. Cases were car or van drivers involved in road crashes needing hospitalisation. Demographic and trauma related data was collected from hospital and ambulance records. Urine and/or blood samples were collected on admission. ...
All blood and urine samples were tested for alcohol and a number of licit and illicit drugs. The main outcome measures were odds ratios (OR) for injury crash associated with single or multiple use of several drugs by drivers.
The risk for road trauma was increased for single use of benzodiazepines (adjusted OR 5.1 (95% Cl: 1.8–14.0)) and alcohol (blood alcohol concentrations of 0.50–0.79 g/l, adjusted OR 5.5 (95% Cl: 1.3–23.2) and≥0.8 g/l, adjusted OR 15.5 (95% Cl: 7.1–33.9)). High relative risks were estimated for drivers using combinations of drugs (adjusted OR 6.1 (95% Cl: 2.6–14.1)) and those using a combination of drugs and alcohol (OR 112.2 (95% Cl: 14.1–892)). Increased risks, although not statistically significantly, were assessed for drivers using amphetamines, cocaine, or opiates. No increased risk for road trauma was found for drivers exposed to cannabis. [emphasis added]
Let me repeat that:
No increased risk for road trauma was found for drivers exposed to cannabis.
This adds more to the already significant body of information on this site regarding marijuana and driving.
Thanks to NORML for the tip.
Update: I suppose I should have given the normal disclaimer. I am not advocating driving while stoned. It's a bad idea. (I don't advocate driving while fatigued or talking on a cellphone either.) What the studies continually show, however, is that the hype from the Drug Czar's office regarding the dangers of "drugged driving" is completely overblown and intended to attack marijuana users through zero tolerance laws, not increase safety.
What this study says is that there is no additional odds of being involved in an accident requiring hospitalization if you've smoked marijuana. And that fits with other studies that have shown that marijuana smokers realize that they're impaired, and slow down and increase caution to compensate.
6:36:29 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 |
The place to be on August 30th...
... is 7th Avenue between 28th and 34th Streets (outside Madison Square Garden) from 2pm to 6pm.
That's when Russell Simmons and others are hosting a massive rally and hip-hop summit to protest the Rockefeller drug laws in New York and other mandatory minimum laws around the country. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Nas, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Mariah Carey and Carly Simon are among those slated to attend the rally.
Russell Simmons declared, "This will be the biggest hip-hop gathering ever,
and we intend for our voices to be heard. We will not be silenced. The March
on New York is going down. It will be the illest march in history.."
Let's see now... Checking Madison Square Garden's reservation book... August 30.. Ah, here it is: the opening day of the Republican National Convention. Should be very interesting.
10:29:51 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Your brain on drug ads
Via Hit and Run:
Carson B. Wagner, an advertising professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has studied the effects of anti-drug ads on viewers using a technique known as response latency measurement of strength of association:
"Rather than directly asking research participants to express their attitudes about drugs, response latency SOA measures allow researchers to gauge people's attitudes without their direct knowledge, thereby yielding a more accurate measure of the research participant's attitudes that better predicts behavioral decision-making under various conditions." ...
The results showed that people who self-reported their attitudes after viewing the anti-drug ads expressed strong anti-drug sentiments, as opposed to the weaker anti-drug sentiments measured in the response latency tests after viewing the same anti-drug ads. These findings suggested that, compared to response latency measures, self-report measures exaggerated the effectiveness of anti-drug ads... "Based on these findings, the self-report surveys may have produced inflated claims of the ads' effects," he concludes.
Not good news for the Drug Czar, who likes to fund his own studies to insure positive results and continued funding, so I doubt that the administration will be paying much attention to this study.
The study also notes that anti-drug ads may actually increase curiosity about drugs. This makes a lot of sense. I remember when I was a cigarette smoker and the Cancer Society would run nasty anti-smoking TV ads. Intellectually, I would watch the ad and say "I've got to quit," but at the same time I would reach for a cigarette, triggered by the ad.
9:49:00 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Economies dwarfed by drug trade
The San Jose Mercury News had an article by Mark McDonald on Sunday; Heroin Trade Booms in Afghanistan: New Wealth Helps Terrorists Rebuild, Threatens Neighbors
This is more of what we've already talked about -- the heroin trade is really the only hope for significant economic activity in Afghanistan, but unfortunately, since it's illegal, all the money goes to the criminal sector, including terrorists. But this article also talks about the neighbors:
At particular risk is Tajikistan, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim nation of 7 million.
Tajikistan produces almost no opium or heroin of its own, but it has become a natural pathway for traffickers because of its 900-mile border with Afghanistan. ...
Tajikistan, isolated and landlocked, has almost no industrial economy other than a state-controlled aluminum smelter. Foreign investment is minuscule; not a single American firm is operating in the country.
The national budget is barely $300 million a year, a pittance compared with the size of the drug economy. The heroin trade alone, Yuldashov said, is 10 times as big.
10 times as big as their entire national budget! That's a recipe for disaster, and enforcement ain't gonna help.
We've got to look toward new international drug policies.
9:38:05 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004 |
Mayor's getting ideas
Some good ones.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Mayor Larry Campbell has proposed legalizing and taxing marijuana sales ... to raise money for treatment of the effects of more dangerous drugs. ...
Campbell said regulation should be similar to that of tobacco and alcohol, citing the example of Amsterdam, where cultivation and sales of marijuana are legal within certain regulations.
Studies indicate fewer residents of the Netherlands than, for example, Americans, have tried marijuana, and cannabis use among Dutch schoolchildren has fallen, he said.
"The conclusion is pretty clear," he said. "Legal, regulated sale of marijuana may actually produce less consumption."
Looks like that new study I've been talking about is getting around.
6:08:38 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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A really bad trip
Joel Miller, senior editor of World Net Daily Books, is coming out with a new book: "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America.". Today at WND, he talked about it:
Drug laws only have public support so long as drugs are deemed extremely dangerous. Every time an effort to crack down on drugs is made with new laws, politicians hype the threat caused by narcotics and other psychoactive substances in an attempt to whip the public into a frightened tangle of angst-ridden nerves.
More fear means more support for whatever is supposed to alleviate the fear, and more support means bigger budgets. Every politician knows how to exploit this peculiar form of calculus.
This doesn't mean that drug abuse does not cause problems. It only means that pols have every incentive to inflate problems and stoke dread to get what they want, namely tougher prohibition measures.
But as I argue in my forthcoming book, "Bad Trip," these measures amplify every problem drugs are supposedly the cause of: crime, corruption, destructive abuse, the whole nine kilos. It's a bureaucratic make-work program -- a self-justifying and self-perpetuating system that both deceives and bilks taxpayers to keep going.
Joel nails it. I look forward to reading the book, which I've added to my wish list.
5:49:57 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Getting... the point
Thanks to David for pointing out a somewhat strange report about Haiti.
I hadn't been aware of News Central TV before this. Apparently they're trying to be some kind of national news network. I'm not impressed. They've got this guy named Mark Hyman who gives you "The Point" -- apparently while missing it by a mile.
In a recent "Point," he talks about Haiti and the departure of Aristide (spoken with the animation of a piece of wood):
A welcomed development since his departure is the drop in illegal drug shipments through Haiti and into the U.S. Robert Charles, head of the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reported that drug traffickers thrived in Haiti because of political instability, economic hardships and corruption. Charles credits the new Haitian government, foreign troop presence and increased interdiction efforts for stopping the drug flow. ...
Successful efforts to reduce the flow is good news for combating drug trafficking in the U.S.
And that's The Point.
I'm Mark Hyman.
Is that the point? I'm wondering if what the New York Times reported might be at least a partial point...
Difficult as it may be to believe, people here say, life in the poorest nation in the hemisphere has gotten worse in the past two months.
The fact that people are starving and the price of rice has doubled might be an important point.
But why bother about the people when you've got drugs to stop? That's certainly the view of foreign policy moron Robert Charles. Fortunately, not that many people take him seriously. I've already shown you his stupidity regarding Afghanistan.
I have another question for Mark Hyman. What does this "successful efforts to reduce the flow" mean? Has there been any evidence that drugs are less available? How do you successfully "reduce the flow"? How about the DEA seizing one million tons of cocaine? Well they did more than that between 1986 and 2002 with no apparent effect. What is the "point" of attempting to reduce the flow?
I'm going to give Mark a free lesson in drug economics:
Think of drug supply as a river, and drug demand as gravity. As long as there is gravity, the water in the river will find a way to flow. You can divert it and it goes around. You can take out buckets of water, but there's always more coming. Focusing on drug flow in Haiti is stupid and (as long as people are starving) criminal.
Hey, Mark! Still think you know the point?
12:16:01 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Monday, May 10, 2004 |
In Medina, Ohio, smoking pot is as bad as beating your wife
With court approval, Medina is re-implementing an unusual ordinance, which goes further than the state law and carries a mandatory three-day jail sentence.
While the rest of the state considers possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana to be similar, in a legal sense, to jaywalking - punishable by a $100 fine - Medina's ordinance classifies it as a first-degree misdemeanor, the same category as domestic violence. ...
... the ordinance makes carrying a marijuana cigarette in Medina a worse crime than possessing heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine.
None of those drugs carry mandatory jail time. ...
If police follow through, Medina [population 25,000] will spend $20,000 a year to feed and jail people convicted under the marijuana law...
Well, after all, they just passed an income tax increase in Medina in November. They've got to spend it on something.
Just so you know what to avoid, Medina is just southwest of Cleveland, off I-71.
6:34:08 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Constitutional Shenanigans
You've heard me rail about Ernest Istook's bizarre spending provision that would actually prevent metro systems from accepting advertising that promotes legalization of marijuana (despite what Istook says, it doesn't prevent advertising illegal activites, but only advertising advocacy for a particular political position). It's very hard to get any more unconstitutional than preventing the expression of a particular political viewpoint.
Well, a little over a week ago, the ACLU, Change the Climate, Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project
argued their case in court. I wasn't able to report on it in detail at the time, but I've enjoyed reading the court filings and wanted to share a little with you.
Of course, Section 177 is so bad, it's amazing the government lawyers are even able to mount a defense. In fact, their defense has depended on misdirection and outright inapplicable legal references. Embarrassing.
It makes the ACLU's response (pdf) to the government's defense (pdf) quite delightful to read. The ACLU realizes how absolutely consitutionally indefensible the government's position is and they can't help getting in some digs. (Of course, these sarcastic passages are in addition to detailed, strong constitutional arguments by the ACLU -- the Memorandum of Plaintiffs (pdf) is a thing of beauty.)
Opening statement in the reply brief:
It is disappointing that the Government decided to attempt to defend the
indefensible – a statute designed, and already operating, to restrain one side of an active
political debate. Justice would better have been served had the Justice Department not
imposed the entire burden of defending the Constitution on the plaintiffs and the Court.
Ouch! Nice score. But wait, it gets better. The government had tried to argue that they weren't regulating content since the metro system could, on their own, decide to eliminate all speech.
For example, a transit system could bar all advocacy statements relating to
marijuana use from any point of view. Of course that would unconstitutionally
discriminate against marijuana policy as a topic, so maybe the transit system could bar all
advocacy of legal change, or maybe all advocacy altogether, or maybe all advertising
altogether.
The Government might as well argue that a statute withholding federal funds from
transit systems that permit black women to sit in the front of the bus would be
constitutional because a transit system could comply in an even-handed manner by
removing all seats.
Oooh! Two points. But there's more:
As the Court will recall from the conference setting the briefing schedule, the
filing of the opposition brief was delayed for some weeks to permit ample time for “coordination” among various unidentified organs of Government. In the brief’s closing peroration, however, we see exactly what that coordination has yielded:
An order enjoining enforcement of Section 177 would
undermine Congress’ legitimate interest in not promoting
or providing the means for the expression of ideas that run
contrary to and may serve to undermine federal policy
adopted to protect the public’s well-being.
Gov’t Opp’n Mem. at 22. This passage is followed by a “cf.” site to two cases that do not
support it, because the only direct support is to be found in the likes of Brave New World
and 1984.
There is no government interest, none at all, in suppressing ideas that run contrary to federal policy. There is rather an interest in robust free debate and expression, and in preventing government efforts to suppress ideas that run “contrary to federal policy.” That is exactly why Section 177 should be enjoined without further delay.
Game. Set. Match.
Now all we have to do is wait for the court decision.
12:09:09 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Sunday, May 9, 2004 |
Marijuana shown not addictive, not gateway
The recent study comparing marijuana use in San Francisco and Amsterdam is a real blow to the drug warriors. Not only did it show that prohibition does not reduce marijuana use, there were a couple of other very interesting things in the study.
The full report is now available online as text and as a pdf with graphs.
I've had a little time to look at the study, and I'd like to share two particular tables with you, that go beyond the main reported results of the study.
The first one fairly effectively debunks the myth of marijuana as an addictive drug.
TABLE 1—Trajectories of Overall Career Use:
Pattern | Amsterdam
No. (%) | San Francisco
No. (%) |
| 1: declining | 17 (7.9) | 18 (6.8) |
| 2: escalating | 13 (6.0) | 17 (6.4) |
| 3: stable | 24 (11.1) | 5 (1.9) |
| 4: increase/decline | 104 (48.1) | 133 (50.4) |
| 5: intermittent | 7 (3.2) | 25 (9.5) |
| 6: variable | 51 (23.6) | 66 (25.0) |
| Total | 216 (100.0) | 264 (100.0) |
Claims that cannabis produces addiction or
dependence lead one to expect that many experienced users would report Pattern
2—escalation of use over time. But this pattern was reported by only 6% in both
cities, which means that 94% of respondents had overall career use patterns that did not entail escalation across careers.
This is something that is common sense to those who are familiar with how marijuana works, but it's an important refutation to the drug warriors' claims. It also shows the most common way cannabis is used -- an increase followed by a decline. People use it for a while and then stop or reduce their use voluntarily -- certainly not the trend of a dangerous drug.
Here's another interesting table from the study. This one focuses on regular cannabis users in the two cities and the degree to which they experiment with other drugs.
TABLE 2—Prevalence of Other Illicit Drug Use, Lifetime and During the Past 3 Months:
| | Amsterdam (n = 216) | San Francisco (n = 264) |
| | LTP | P3MP | LTP | P3MP |
| Cocaine | 48.1 | 9.3 | 73.2 | 7.5 |
| Crack | 3.7 | 0.5 | 18.1 | 1.1 |
| Amphetamines | 37.5 | 1.9 | 60.4 | 4.5 |
| Ecstasy | 25.5 | 9.3 | 40.0 | 6.4 |
| Opiates | 21.8 | 0.5 | 35.5 | 2.7 |
LTP=Lifetime Prevalence, P3MP=Past 3 Months Prevalence
Note that in the city where prohibition is the rule, there is significantly higher rates of experimentation with other drugs. As opposed to the gateway theory, this indicates that prohibition actually increases the likelihood of using other illicit drugs.
As the study notes:
The “separation of markets,”
in which lawfully regulated cannabis
distribution reduces the likelihood that people
seeking cannabis will be drawn into deviant
subcultures where “hard drugs” also are sold
is one public health objective of Dutch decriminalization.
Looks like their idea works better than ours.
Good stuff. Would like to see the media run with this more, though.
4:38:34 PM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Alternet has a big week
AlterNet.org's Drug Reporter is a good source of articles, although usually spotty, with some long gaps between them. However, this past week has seen a burst of articles worth reading. Check these out:
 Hooray for Bruce Mirken's Lies and the Lazy Reporters Who Repeat Them, where he takes to task the media that carry the government's alarmist stories about pot potency without doing their job as reporters.
For shame.
Way to go, Bruce! We need more people keeping the mainstream media honest (particularly when the government is not).
Erik Davis, in Don't Get High Without It gives us a nice, detailed feature about the Vaults of Erowid, which may be the most comprehensive source of useful information about the wide range of drugs which are used.
Davis notes that the mainstream science channels have become less useful (particularly with all the biased research) and more people are turning to Erowid for information (including health professionals).
Though it largely ignores policy debates, Erowid is a striking example of guerrilla information war. Millions of people, particularly young people, regularly access a repository of data whose very accessibility erodes the coercive exaggerations, hysteria and outright lies common to government and mainstream-media discussion of drugs. In addition, the very form of Erowid, which presents a model of an honest and open-minded psychoactive culture, encourages intelligent decision making.
Particularly appropriate on Mother's Day is Martha Rosenbaum's Personal Voices: A Mother's Advice about Drugs. This is a great letter to any child who will be facing difficult choices.
Ann Harrison in Counting the Costs of the Drug War, discusses an Independent Institute forum held this week, where analysts tried to quantify the real costs of the drug war.
The forum included Boston University economist Jeffrey A. Miron, who is author of the new book Drug War Crimes.
"There is no reason to think that the benefits of reducing myopic drug use balances the costs that prohibition places on society," says Miron. "The best policy is to legalize drugs and do it sooner rather than later."
It's nice to see economists and analysts putting an additional legitimate voice to this issue that those of us in the drug reform community have known for years.
11:34:03 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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Commencement
Last night was our commencement ceremony. It was a blast, and I can't say how much I enjoyed greeting our students as they crossed the stage.
For those students who read this blog regularly, please keep in touch and keep reading DrugWarRant. The responsibility is yours to make something happen in this drug war. Vote. Get involved. Tell people. Don't worry about what people will think if you speak up -- in many cases, they feel the same way, but are too frightened to say so. Others can be taught, and if you take the time to learn some basic facts, they'll appreciate that you are speaking from a position of strength.
And thanks for your inspiration. The response to my talks about the Drug War at Theatre of Ted and the enthusiasm of those of you who came to me for material for papers and speeches provoked me to start this blog.
To my other readers: Thanks for your patience the past couple of weeks. Some interesting things have happened in the drug war, and I'll be trying to do a little catch-up.
11:25:25 AM | drug policy | Related | permalink |
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