Govt's self-justifying marijuana policy

Jacob Sullum has a good piece in Reason about the lousy statistics used by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to justify its harmful, wasteful, unhelpful war on drugs.

To bolster the idea that marijuana is more addictive today, the ONDCP notes that "16.1% of drug treatment admissions [in 2006] were for marijuana as the primary drug of abuse," compared to "6% in 1992." But referrals from the criminal justice system account for three-fifths of these treatment admissions, and marijuana arrests have increased by more than 150 percent since 1990.
By arresting people for marijuana possession and forcing them into treatment, the government shows why it has to arrest people for marijuana possession. That's our self-justifying drug policy in a nutshell.

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Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Setharian

Jeez… OK, here we go: Dear Nazi Bastards that run and profit from the ForeverWar and Oil Machine (Cheney, Bush, the rest of you, you know who you are). Has it ever occurred to you in your tiny little minds that it is not in your bloodsucking interests to kill your host? You’ve bankrupted America. You may feel safe with your Swiss accounts and gated communities, but even someone as utterly amoral and therefore terminally stupid as yourselves must realize that you need a society to victimize in order to sustain your habits.

Wow, even for a weblog groupie, that’s an impressive collection of false correlation, spurious attribution, ad hominem mania, and improvised facts.

Boing Boing should bestow honorary tiaras or something.
Nelson.C

Setharian @29: Takuan is the one who hands out the tiaras.

Also, it’s a plea from the heart, and as such doesn’t need to meet standards of evidence or indeed, those of polite discourse. If you’d like to turn it into a discussion, or even an argument, perhaps you should bring something to the table yourself.
Takuan

oh, I’ve got something better than a tiara for anyone who wants to defend those vampire flakes.
adric

People just LOVE telling other people how to live their life.…
That said, anyone over the age of 25 that smokes weed is embarrassing. Grow up.

wow. no kidding
things

“Depending on the process used, clothing manufactured from hemp can last anywhere from 3x to 10 times longer than those made from cotton”

I wish this were true. I bought some hemp pants and they were covered in holes after only a couple years. Guess they weren’t manufactured in the right process but either way, didn’t make me very confident in hemp clothing…
Ugly Canuck

Since 1966 it’s been clear, this boils down to:

Drug users vs. Nazis.

The “Anti-Us” is a troll here, Marijuana has a prophylatic effect wrt lung/throat cancer (see Gardiner’s articles in Counterpunch for references – they shut down the Researcher, of course).
Also Guzman’s work in Spain, showing THC efficacy in reducing the size of tumors in rats.
Anti-us is citing drug-war bought and paid-for “science”/propaganda -”Marijuana makes you insane!” Unlike war…
The Brit trials re:medical use (very recent – but deep-sixed by a state-controlled (at least on this topic) media – were halted early as it became clear that to deny this medicine to people would be unethical…and they did not want to establish incontrovertible evidence of this on the record…so the Brits loosened their pot rules (and halted the research) while pseudo-science – “Pot made my kid a schizophrenic!” – gets widely publicized in their right-wing tabloids…
There’s a reason marijuana research is outright banned by politicians in the USA, and it’s not a good reason, it’s to preserve the combo Cop-Mob rule of the simple harmless pleasures of life… so that they can charge 150,000% profits for something we could just grow for ourselves with very little effort.
Ugly Canuck

Don’t take my word for it. See the massive Report by the Canadian Senate which ended up recommending, unanimously, that pot be legalized forthwith. In response, our then PM Chretien said that the Gov would de-criminalize. That’s when the Right-wing Libs decided to high-gear their plan to dump Chretien….
And when the election of Martin vs. harper was in progress the RCMP announced the opening of a criminal investigation into the Liberal’s Minister of Finance…unprecedented interference by the RCMP in Can. politics…which favored the (co-incidentally pro-”Law’n'Order”) Reform Party’s chances. The investigation of course resulted in nothing…
These guys are now our Gov and they have but one thing in mind for “getting tough on crime” …. draconian penalties for growing and using Marijuana. The only thing that’s stopped them is their minority status. And our Courts.
Our Charter of Rights forbids the deprivation of a person’s security and/or liberty unless this is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. The Supreme Court has held that simple possession of marijuana on its own never justifies jail time.Zealously-enforced Marijuana laws bring the administration of Justice into disrepute…cops beating up the harmless, so to speak.People that the Law has harmed…
The Reform party has upped its attacks on the Judiciary, of course…”liberal” appointees, ignoring “the will of Parliament”, etc…
And of course anything which issues (or has ever issued) from the Senate is for that reason alone treated with contempt…the governing Party doesn’t like to consult except with Enforcers…
The Reform Party wants to contract out our law enforcement to USians….
Spoon

@#43 posted by mikelotus

“Liquid sky is slang for heroin. And Spoon, there is no proven physical addiction to marijuana. Nicotine is more physically addictive than liquid sky. And it takes 9 to 12 days to get rid of the nicotine in your system according to the American Lung Association.”

Are you f’n kidding me? People who quit smoking cold are a little moody for a few days, people who stop heroin cold need medical treatment. I’m glad you quit smoking, but don’t pretend you went through more then someone getting over a real physical addition because it’s just the psychological effects that are strong in tobacco just like all other drugs that you take habitually, habits are hard to kick as you and your doctor know, which is why substitution (taking up a different habit) is advised in situations when you find yourself reminded of your old habit (you can replace habit with addiction if you really want to continue thinking and telling people that you’re tougher then everyone who’s ever overcome a heroin addiction).
jennydecki

If it wasn’t for self-justification…there wouldn’t be any justice at all! Wah-wah-wah-waaaahhhhhh

@18 – That is a fantastic litmus test for if something is a drug or not! I plan on using it for people who say they are addicted to chocolate. Oh really? HOW addicted?
Spoon

I dunno, the war on drugs never really seemed, to me at least, like it was targeting pot. I know a few people (out of a bunch of people) who where arrested and put on probation for having or distributing quantities of the crap that would last them a few months, but they wouldn’t go to jail unless they screwed up again (and they would all stop selling or possessing the stuff after their arrest). In a lot of ways getting caught with pot is like drunk driving in that, for the most part, nothing happen unless you kill a family of four, and even then chances are you’ll only serve around 5 years (and yes I know killing a family of 4 is really f’n bad and being in the possession of a weed isn’t).

As for pot being less addictive then smoking (which is slowly being rejected completely by society) it’s only less addictive because most people don’t have the means or opportunity to smoke it 24/7 like they do with cigs. After being clean for a week all the cravings for smoking are mental, not a physical need, and if you’ve ever seen someone who smoked three joints a day for a year and then suddenly couldn’t get any more you wouldn’t think nicotine addiction was bad.
JFlex

So is legalizing pot still considered a third rail in politics? I think it probably is, but I guess that with all this real issue stuff going on, I haven’t stopped to consider what society’s reaction would be to a politician who proposed dropping this silly ban.
Takuan

http://www.hr95.org/
OM

“Not everyone has a doctor who’ll load them up with anti-depressants, anxiolytics and Vicodin, so don’t gloat.”

…Uh, excuse me, but me and “Stumpy”(*) resemble that remark. And besides, we all know that hydrocodone is an essential vitamine *and* one of the Four Food Groups, along with caffine, sugar and alcohol!

(*) Had it not been for the Almighty V, “Stumpy” and I would have had a far more difficult time these past two months since my infamous amputation.
Antinous

Believe me, OM, my feelings about Vicodin belong in the thread about people in love with objects. Unfortunately, not everyone has a sympathetic doctor. And aren’t you supposed to be pimping your cyber-leg for our entertainment?
nerdkiller

This has a whiff (pun intended) of the Jenkem hoax. Os is someone excited about season 3 of Dexter. In addition I’ve always wanted to write “FURST!”.
Takuan

Jeez… OK, here we go: Dear Nazi Bastards that run and profit from the ForeverWar and Oil Machine (Cheney, Bush, the rest of you, you know who you are). Has it ever occurred to you in your tiny little minds that it is not in your bloodsucking interests to kill your host? You’ve bankrupted America. You may feel safe with your Swiss accounts and gated communities, but even someone as utterly amoral and therefore terminally stupid as yourselves must realize that you need a society to victimize in order to sustain your habits.

Tax pot.

You can’t pay for the guns and bombs you need with the mess you’ve made. The reefer madness charade is used up. Just take the damned money and legalize. There is always cocaine if you are so fond of the off the books revenue.

Who knows? If by some miracle you stand trial for the crimes you have committed, maybe, just maybe legalizing pot and emptying the prisons might save your filthy little necks from the noose.

But I hope not.
Takuan

you really don’t listen do you, notthisgod?
Anonymous

I dunno, the war on drugs never really seemed, to me at least, like it was targeting pot…in a lot of ways getting caught with pot is like drunk driving in that, for the most part, nothing happen unless you kill a family of four

Um…no.

“in 2007 there were 44,640 Americans imprisoned at the state and federal level solely for offenses related to this natural herb. Thereâ€™s no count on the numbers held in local and county jails.”

http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/06/americas-real-d.html
ToddBerman

This is makes me think of the white house’s interpretation of a recent study showing that pot has gotten more potent in an article I saw in the SF Chronicle.

“(06-12) 04:21 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) –

Marijuana potency increased last year to the highest level in more than 30 years, posing greater health risks to people who may view the drug as harmless, according to a report released Thursday by the White House.”

That’s weird logic. More potent drugs mean people smoke less and do less damage to their lungs.
Xenu

When we had DARE training in elementary school, they warned us that “you shouldn’t do drugs because you could go to JAIL!”

It’s a stupid argument, but it was my first lesson in recursion. Maybe that’s why I’m a software developer now.
OM

…The reason this holds AbZero water has nothing to do with whether or not Reefer Madness told the truth or not. It’s that MJ production in this country was made illegal through the efforts of King Cotton to make sure that hemp did not become a viable cash crop. Depending on the process used, clothing manufactured from hemp can last anywhere from 3x to 10 times longer than those made from cotton,, and exhibit the same wear properties. What tipped the cotton manufacturers off was when the tourist trade along the Texas-Mexico border uncovered numerous situations where children were wearing shirts made from hemp that their parents had worn when they were their age, and even a few situations where their *grandparents* were the previous wearers at the same age, and the shirts showed far less wear than ones made of cotton would have exhibited from such use and age.

Based on this little-acknowledged fact, if they discovered that cheap jumpsuits could be made from paper that would feel like cloth, every tree in this country would be exterminated just to keep King Cotton on it’s throne…

Side Note: Note that this bit of enlightenment comes from someone who’s allergic to THC, and not only can’t toke, but has to avoid those who do when it gets too thick…
Banksynergy

I second everything Takuan says.
Also, I found this wiki image recently…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
…showing an x/y graph comparing dependency vs. physical harm for 20 drugs.
If you don’t understand people who think weed should be legal, take a look at where it sits on the graph.
vonmises

In an alternate universe, a science fiction writer would describe a government that prohibited the possession of a plant far less dangerous than alcohol or high fructose corn syrup. Readers would laugh at the ridiculous plot. A couple years later it would get made into an off-Broadway play. And no one’s life would be ruined by stage thugs.
Antinous

NotThisGod,

You’re on a timeout for linkspamming. You may apply to Teresa for reinstatement.
cycle23

Anyone over the age of 25 that still drinks beer should grow up.

Yup. That’s a 4 year window for you to get your jollies on here in the states. Enjoy!
demidan

@3
William Randolf Hurst was a driving force behind the ilegalization of marijuana more so than big cotton, because the cost of turning hemp into paper still cost 25% of the new paper production through pulp that Hurst had just patented.

Either/any way the cost of housing MJ criminals alone is estimated at $10-16 billion a year. Just think of the money saved from legalization and even more when you tack on a nice sin tax.
yer_maw

People just LOVE telling other people how to live their life. Their is a school marm fetish involved in all those in authority, obsessig over the minutae of your life and how you should live it.

That said, anyone over the age of 25 that smokes weed is embarrassing. Grow up.
- Antinous
  
  anyone over the age of 25 that smokes weed is embarrassing. Grow up.
  
  Not everyone has a doctor who’ll load them up with anti-depressants, anxiolytics and Vicodin, so don’t gloat. Also, telling people to grow up is one of the Five Principal Examples of Unintentional Irony.
  
  1) Anyone who tells other people to grow up, hasn’t.
  2) Anyone who tells other people to relax, can’t.
  3) Anyone who tells other people to get over it, hasn’t.
  4) Anyone who tells other people to stop whining, won’t.
  5) Anyone who tells other people to get a life, doesn’t have one.
eustace

Aeon Flux is slang for acid?!? I AM getting old.
rebdav

Why does everyone advocate taxation on pot when the discussion comes up? Do you have any idea how problematic alcohol taxation is on ethanol production even for fuel? This is a plant it should be legal with no strings attached just like roses, apples, and dandelions.
Patrick Austin

It’s not about safety. I think it’s completely undeniable that pot is safer than fast food or alcohol or cigarettes or driving a car or sex. It’s not going to change at the national level any time soon. Sorry, potheads. Localized relief (california) is doable, but your congressman isn’t about to kill the DEA.

Most adults who consume marijuana are probably too paranoid about getting fired or having their kids stolen by CPS to go stand on a street corner collecting signatures. It’s fine to go out for beers with a coworker, but suggest smoking a spliff to to your boss? It’s fine to ask a family over for a cocktail, but little Johny’s parents would freak out if they knew there were DRUGS in little Billy’s house.

This, of course, feeds into the idea that the only people who smoke pot are somehow different. Young or scary or stupid or weird.

The only people who are vocal about wanting to change marijuana laws are not the sort of spokespeople that get much sympathy (except for the cancer victims).
Takuan

(SHHHH!) let them have their greedy little fantasy, it will be over quick enough. Reason doesn’t work on the truly evil, you have to dress it up with cupidity.
Patchouli Pete

I’m high right now.
Takuan

and the amount of pot I’ve consumed over the past decade wouldn’t fill three joints, That Is Not The Point.
Takuan

http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/c1ee8c441a92e25c011a9e04a99601d5_Cannabis_pills_to_hit_the_market_by_2013.do.html
Oren Beck

Were the issue really about “harm” or “damage” it would be possible to show valid reproducible proof.
And by that standard what does the tacit governmental endorsement of Ethanol, Nicotine, Caffeine say about harm and damage being something to protect us from? Ah well- someone recently enlightened me on a harsh reality.

America has become a Kleptocratic repressive political machine. One that has chosen schadenfreude and hypocrisy for it’s lesser and greater guiding lights. Sadly that’s being overly kind.
mikelotus

Liquid sky is slang for heroin. And Spoon, there is no proven physical addiction to marijuana. Nicotine is more physically addictive than liquid sky. And it takes 9 to 12 days to get rid of the nicotine in your system according to the American Lung Association. I could not have quit without nicorette gum. I remember my doctor telling me that 11 years after he quit, he would still find himself reaching into his pocket for a cig when coffee was brought to the table after dinner. And I now know the same thing. Nicotine is an insidious addiction. Comparing it to marijuana is ludicrous, but hey, don’t feel alone.
Takuan

Liquid Sky… now that was one strange film
Takuan

In my life I know far too many who have died from lung cancer from tobacco. I do not know anyone who has died from marijuana.
Daemon

“We need to keep arresting people for smoking pot to justify all the arrests we’ve made so far.”

#4 – By that chart, it looks like “khat” should be the drug of choice for the world.
Takuan

passed the bar but can’t find the right thread?
Damien

I am so sick of this already.
Takuan

I wonder how many anti-pot types have had the misfortune to contract cancer and then discover the relief cannabis can bring? Any wish to fess up and testify?
minTphresh

so far, in the 5000 years or so since people have been counting these sorts of things. there has never been one single account of a person dying from ingesting cannabis. period. in a study in 2006 researchers tried to get rats to O.D. on pot by feeding it to them whilst continuously pumping in vaporized herb. not only did the rats NOT die, they were healthier and better adjusted mentally then their placebo cohorts. they could not find an overdose point! we as humans have in our brains, a cannabanoid system centered near our pineal glands. its entire function is to utilize THC. THC has been found to be the greatest killer of brain cancer cells. THC has been found to halt, and in some cases, reverse alzhimer’s disease. it would take me days to extole the virtues of this plant whose main crime is the fact that it makes people feel good.
toolbag

Ridiculous. If the US DEA really wanted to impact drug usage they should just start buying it under cover from both the sources and at the street level. Then, dump it in the ocean. Obviously it wouldn’t eliminate drug use but it would certainly be cheaper and a hell of a lot less destructive than the current interdiction/arrest policy we have now.

On another note sending marijuana users to drug treatment just makes me think of Dave Chapelle’s “Half Baked”:

“Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck d*ck for coke. Now that’s an addiction. You ever suck some d*ck for marijuana?”
Antinous

Let’s not get all dewy-eyed about it. It’s still a drug that is primarily administered via toxin-laden smoke. I’m in favor of decriminalizing all drug use, but that doesn’t mean pretending that drugs don’t have health impacts.

From Wikipedia

A recent study by the Canadian government found cannabis contained more toxic substances than tobacco smoke. The study determined that marijuana smoke contained 20 times more ammonia, and five times more hydrogen cyanide and nitrous oxides than tobacco smoke. In spite of this, a recent large-scale study found no correlation between heavy marijuana use and lung cancer, despite noting that cannabis contains the same carcinogens as tobacco. The same study found a 20-fold increase in lung-cancer rates of smokers who consumed two or more packs of cigarettes per day. These researchers postulated that the THC present may have a “protective effect” by causing aging cells to die before they become cancerous. Other recent research suggest the cannabinoid CBD may stop certain cancers from spreading, although not in concentrations consumed during smoking.

In contrast, a study published in the January 2008 edition of the journal Respirology found that “regular” cannabis smokers who developed bullous lung disease did so on average 24 years sooner than tobacco smoking counterparts. Researchers attributed this to the inhalation of a larger volume of smoke, and typically holding it for four times longer than tobacco smokers. Bullous lung disease is considered an uncommon cause of respiratory distress. In general, habitual inhalation of any kind of smoke is detrimental to lung health.

Cannabis use has been linked to exacerbating the effects of depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, bronchitis, and emphysema by several peer-reviewed studies for those who are vulnerable to such illnesses based on personal or family history. More recently, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study published research showing an increased risk of psychosis for cannabis users with a certain genetic predisposition, held by 25% of the population. Studies have also shown links between heavy long-term use (over five joints daily over several years) and incidence of heart attacks, strokes, as well as abnormalities in the amygdala and hippocampus regions of the brain.

In July 2007, British medical journal The Lancet published a study that indicates that cannabis users have, on average, a 41% greater risk of developing psychosis than non-users. The risk was most pronounced in cases with an existing risk of psychotic disorder, and was said to grow up to 200% for the most-frequent users.

Cannabis is often infected with mold such as potentially dangerous Aspergillus and sometimes other microorganisms. The researchers “Levitz and Diamond (1991) suggested baking marijuana in home ovens at 150 Â°C [302 Â°F], for five minutes before smoking. Oven treatment killed conidia of A. fumigatus, A. flavus and A. niger, and did not degrade the active component of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).”
Takuan

brownies then.

I just want the enormous waste to end. Lives ruined by stupid laws,millions if not billions by now flushed down the drain, the endless distraction from the real problems.
juanpa

@7, why do you say it’s embarrassing?
sazzamook

To further comment no 4…
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/uob-an032207.php
The UK have just thrown back a huge re-think policy reccomendation too… sux…
Jeff

“1) Anyone who tells other people to grow up, hasn’t.
2) Anyone who tells other people to relax, can’t.
3) Anyone who tells other people to get over it, hasn’t.
4) Anyone who tells other people to stop whining, won’t.
5) Anyone who tells other people to get a life, doesn’t have one.”

6) Anyone who moderates needs to be moderated themselves.
7) Those who can’t do, teach.
8) Hypocracy is normal human behavior.

I could go on. The above rules are not true.
Dillenger69

This sounds like a biblical argument to me.
StreetLight

I just LOVE the ONDCP document, “Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade”. It’s a real hoot.
http://www.xywrite.com/odd/misc/street.htm
forgeweld

Anyone who starts a sentence with “Anyone…” doesn’t know anything.
AndyCanfield

I used to think that the government does not have a rational drug policy. I was wrong. But the rational drug policy is never spoken. It is this:

Marriage being the foundation of society,
the government outlaws anything
that tastes better than pussy.

When you lose your virginity, they want it to be the best thing you’ve ever experienced, the best thing you will ever experience, so that you’re willing to enslave yourself for life to one person. If you find something better than sex, you become capable of walking away from your spouse.

Of course, there are, presumably, other foundations that society could be built on, and we are discovering them now.
madjo

@#7, I smoked my first joint only recently, and I’m 28 (and Dutch btw).
larf

Never inhaled.
Takuan

@22
completely hilarious! Someone has to write a new drug name generator based on these
racer x

I think Ugly Canuck had it – pot is too easy to grow and too many people are set up to do it. How can you tax what isn’t being sold in a tractable way? The feds are addicted to the money (f*ck the people) – just try to break that addiction.
Takuan

look at the wine industry. Anything can be dressed up to raise the price.
tylersweeney

smoke weed every day for one year and your will have no problems.
EH

I call shenanigans, I don’t see Glint or Super Cool on that list.
5000!

Also, I found this wiki image recently…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
…showing an x/y graph comparing dependency vs. physical harm for 20 drugs.

Holy carp. I need to start doing way more GHB, post haste.
jimh

Mmmm… drugs’r bad, mmmkay?
Cupcake Faerie

I always loved that old picture of Allen Ginsberg at a protest holding a sign that said “Pot is Fun!”
( http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/pot-alan-ginsberg.gif )
I’m with Allen !
Someday, it will not only be legal, maybe it will even be free!