ONDCP Blog Not Allowing Comments
Via Robert Guest:
My quest to comment on the Pushingback.com site is coming to an end.
Keri, my friendly contact at the ONDCP has informed me that the Pushingback.com does not allow for any reader input. Comments are not posted and no one can register to post on the site.
Drug warriors are such cowards. Only a government blog could actually stifle free speech. My tax dollars are being wasted on this nonsense. Why does our government fear debate? What do they have to lose from the free flow of ideas?
I’ve actually wasted my time trying to respond to the anti-common sense propaganda on that site as well.
And here I thought they were just rejecting my well reasoned observations about the uselessness of the Drug War, but it turns out…they already know in advance: people that take enough time to sit down and write out a blog comment have thought the issue through and don’t agree with their position.
So, just turn comments off all together. (Of course, to keep up the farce, they have a “Send Comments” link.)
Drug Czar criticizes randomized placebo-controlled scientific experiment as flawed methodology
From Scientific American today we learn of a study published in the journal Neurology that marijuana helped HIV patients reduce chronic foot pain.
A quick aside here, before commenting on the Drug Czar’s knee-jerk uninformed reaction to this…
HIV-Associated sensory neuropathy is a serious condition affecting almost one third of HIV/AIDS patients. According to Medscape Today, it is characterized by complaints of bizarre burning feelings, lancinating pains, and an increased perception of pain including “pain from stimuli which are not normally painful or noxious”.
I’m neither a doctor nor an HIV or AIDS patient, and frankly I had to look up the meaning of “lancinating”, but I think we can all agree it sounds terrible. This is real suffering, and thank goodness there are scientists pouring their efforts into helping those afflicted.
Now the scientific method demands that to properly study a particular drug’s effect on something, you must take a random sample of people, include a placebo, and measure to see whether there is a statistically significant difference between the drug and the placebo. If there is, you know you’re on to something.
Much of modern medicine is actually based on epidemiology,which studies patterns in populations of people after the fact, and tries to derive causes based on the patients’ histories. That’s all very well, and many times it’s the only available method for studying disease, but in the end, it doesn’t prove causation. It only gives us some good starting points for guesses.
The medical doctors and researchers in the study, however, randomly assigned half of the group to smoke cannabis (at 3.5% THC Content), and half to smoke the same cigarettes with the THC content extracted. Just over half of the cannabis group reported significant pain reduction, as opposed to less than a quarter of the placebo group.
So, can we get the office of the Drug Czar to weigh in on this for us?
David Murray, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's chief scientist, said, "Unfortunately, this particular study is not terribly convincing," citing what he saw as methodological problems.
"Unfortunately, it will lead many people into a false hope that street marijuana is somehow going to be the thing I can use that will make me feel better and won't jeopardize my health. Now that is a fraud and a dangerous one," he told Reuters.
So a randomized placebo-controlled experiment is flawed…says the folks who are still trying to sell you on the logical fallacy known as the “Gateway Theory”.
Milton Friedman on the Drug War
Via Pete Guither at Drug WarRant, selections from the late Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman’s 1990 essay to then Drug Czar Bill Bennett:
The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish.
You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society… Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore.
Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.
Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike.
Read the whole essay here. The section about crack never being invented if Nixon hadn’t started the War on Drugs (“it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version”) is both true, and frankly depressing.
Legalizing Nature
Jordan Smith’s Austin Chronicle column this week, recently renamed from “Weed Watch” to “Reefer Madness”, reports on Bertha Madras’ recent press conference in Austin, Texas. (Madras is the deputy director for demand reduction at the ONDCP.)
Madras misquoted a study by Mount Sinai School of Medicine professor Yasmin Hurd, published in July in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, as proof of the gateway theory for saying rats exposed to marijuana were twice as likely to use heroin later as adults. In fact, Smith points out, they become addicted at the same rate, although the ones exposed to THC at an earlier time did use somewhat larger amounts.
I looked for the study itself, and in doing so ran across this interesting tidbit about the researcher:
Hurd feels that softening the law against marijuana at this point would be "ridiculous", given the number of unknowns about its effects. She adds that two other drugs that also stimulate opioid cells, and could therefore also feasibly cause a gateway effect, are nicotine and alcohol. "If we turned back the clock with the knowledge we have now, these two drugs would never have been legalized," Hurd says. [Emphasis Mine]
Apparently Hurd remembers back fondly on the time when everything was illegal, and we had to ask our government to “legalize” bread and water and other items for us to use.
On perhaps a more serious note, I will end with my frequent plea that we use the term “decriminalize” not “legalize” when talking about drug policy reform. This shows just one more reason: it properly focuses the debate on the fact that the criminalization movement is really the new kid in town.
More on Marijuana Prohibition
John Tierney’s New York Times opinion column today (available, unfortunately, only to Times-Select subscribers) addresses some of the political problems that the Drug War crusaders have had with libertarian voters and others.
Basically there’s a fundamental problem with being both anti-Big Government, and supporting our current drug policy. Also, it’s hard to shout “leave it up to local control”, when local support is overwhelmingly in favor of issues like medical marijuana, but Washington pols want to override state laws.
Focusing on marijuana prohibition (“the chief priority of the current drug czar”), Tierney also addresses some of the fear mongering that Drug War supporters continually engage in, by providing us with some basic facts:
When Californians approved one of the first medical marijuana laws, in 1996, drug warriors were so convinced it would lead to a catastrophic spike in illegal use by teenagers that they sponsored a study to document the damage. But there was no catastrophe: after the law, marijuana use by teenagers actually declined in California.
In the decade since, as the Marijuana Policy Project documented in a recent study, popular support for legalized medical marijuana has increased in California and in virtually every other state with a similar law. Last year it was favored by 78 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll.
There’s no need for those of us who are ashamed of, embarrassed by, and angry with our current moronic policy of wasting tax dollars imprisoning marijuana users to remain quiet. We are in the majority. Shout it from the rooftops if you have to: Decriminalize Marijuana!
More Propaganda From Your Drug Czar...
From the Christian Science Monitor, the title of this article says it all: “Plan Columbia: big gains, but the cocaine still flows…”
The “big gains” part consists of the assertions of the White House Drug Czar John Walters:
"There is absolutely no question we are winning …We are squeezing them. We are forcing them to change their drug trafficking routes and their methods," says Walters.
Wait a minute… changing their routes, their methods??? …as for the “cocaine still flows” part of the article:
There is no lack, after all, of coca. Despite the unprecedented eradication efforts, coca cultivation actually increased last year by 8 percent, according to a study released in June by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)… Why? Growing techniques have improved over the years and farmers in some regions are now able to harvest coca leaf six times a year, instead of the usual four harvests.
(Check out the chart in guest poster Daksya's entry over at DrugWarRant for more on the numbers. )
Near the end of the article comes this last quote. When even the apologists make statements like these, maybe people will wake up and realize what a colossal waste the so called war on drugs is:
"We're making first downs," US Ambassador to Colombia William Wood is fond of saying, "...but we're not sure how long the football field is."
Someone needs to tell Walters and Wood that 10 yard first downs will never win... on an infinitely long field.
