How long do we persist with the failed war on drugs?

[Scooter]

A remarkably enlightened viewpoint, considering it came from the Ottawa Citizen:

The United Nations and national governments the world over, including Canada’s, are actively promoting an epidemic. They are infecting people by the tens and hundreds of thousands. God knows how many will die.

A report released this week by the Global Commission on Drug Policy isn’t quite that blunt, but it comes close. “The global war on drugs is driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic among people use who drugs and their sexual partners,” it concludes. “Throughout the world, research has consistently shown that repressive drug law enforcement practices force drug users away from public health services and into hidden environments where HIV risk becomes markedly elevated. Mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders also plays a major role in increasing HIV risk. ... The war on drugs has also led to a policy distortion whereby evidence-based addiction treatment and public health measures have been downplayed or ignored.”

Among most drug policy researchers and public health officials, that paragraph is no more controversial than saying smoking causes lung cancer. But the members of the Global Commission include former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. And George Schultz, the U.S. secretary of state in the Reagan administration. And Paul Volcker, the near-legendary former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. And Canada’s Louise Arbour, a former Supreme Court justice and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It’s extraordinary to have people of that background and stature agreeing in public that, as the report put it, “the war on drugs has failed and millions of new HIV infections and AIDS deaths can be averted if action is taken now.”

But excellent as the report is, it omits a critical piece of the puzzle.

Why do users take drugs by intravenous injection?
After all, drugs can be swallowed, inhaled, or smoked. Each of these methods is inherently more pleasant than sliding a sliver of cold steel into a vein. What’s more, each of these methods is less likely to result in overdose. Each is less likely to result in abscesses or bacterial infections of the heart. And each involves little or no risk of transmitting blood-borne diseases like hepatitis and HIV.

So why do people use the most unpleasant and dangerous method?

If you look around today, you would say it’s just part of the illicit drug culture. If you hook up with someone who injects, that’s how you learn to take drugs, and, in time, you become habituated to it. Users may even come to feel affection for the little rituals involved in preparing the needle. So that’s why they do it.

But that answer simply pushes the question back a little further: When and why did the most unpleasant and dangerous method of taking drugs become widespread?

In the 19th century, currently illicit drugs were legal. Sometimes people mixed them with alcohol or tea and drank them. Sometimes they smoked them. And occasionally they injected drugs, especially morphine, a more-potent derivative of opium.

But drugs weren’t injected into the veins. Instead, following the medical practice of the day, these were subcutaneous (below the skin) injections. “No one seems to have injected morphine intravenously until the 20th century,” writes historian Richard Davenport-Hines in The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics.

We know roughly where and when it started. It was 1925. In Terre Haute, Indiana. That’s the earliest known account of intravenous drug use. From there, the habit spread like a virus. In 1935, almost half the addicts admitted to an American drug-treatment hospital were doing it. By the early 1950s, injection had become so routine that when a heroin panic swept North America — immortalized by Frank Sinatra in The Man With The Golden Arm — the needle symbolized the threat.

So what caused this dramatic change in users’ behaviour? Drugs were criminalized.

Banning drugs didn’t wipe them out. It merely shifted their sale to the black market. That had two immediate effects.

First, the available drugs tended to come in more potent forms, for the simple reason that smuggling a highly potent drug is easier than smuggling the same drug in less potent form. Imagine having to choose between smuggling a case of vodka or several kegs of beer and you get the idea. As a result, opium was increasingly replaced by morphine and its even more potent chemical cousin, heroin.

The other thing the switch to the black market did was raise the price, by as much as 10 times or more. Inevitably, users became very concerned about the efficiency of the method by which they took the drug: They had to get the “the most bang for the buck.” So forget eating or drinking the drug. That’s the most inefficient method. Smoking is better. So is inhaling.

But the most efficient method of all, by far, is intravenous injection.

Out went opium smoking and the other, safer 19th-century methods of drug consumption. In came heroin injection.

Something like this pattern can be seen whenever drugs were banned.

Opium had been smoked in Thailand for centuries. But in 1959, at the insistence of the United States, the Thai government banned it. Heroin injection appeared and spread almost immediately, so when AIDS arrived in the 1980s, it raced from one needle to another, producing one-third of new infections.

Now, I have to confess that I’ve plagiarized myself here. I wrote almost everything in this column a decade ago. But that underscores the point, doesn’t it?

All of this has been known for years. Even decades. The science writer Edward Brecher laid out much of it in 1972.

But entire generations of politicians have simply refused to examine the evidence and reconsider their policies. Even on something as relatively simple as the efficacy of Insite, the Vancouver injection site, Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty, Jim Watson, and a long list of other politicians have steadfastly refused to take a serious look the evidence and talk about it. It’s hard to imagine any of them having the intellectual honesty and political courage to call for a royal commission into the whole bloody mess.

But who knows? Sometimes, even when it’s least expected, change happens. Maybe the Global Commission on Drug Policy is a straw in the wind.

I sure hope so. Nothing would be more depressing than writing this column again a decade from now.

Let the jackals start howling about how moving away from the conclusively failed policy of criminalization would be a disaster.

[dgs49]

As we have discussed before, an initiative with minimal or no political upside and severe political downsides is doomed to fail.

In a world that cannot even truly legalize marijuana, a far-reaching initiative like the one advocated in this article is nothing but a pipe-dream.

[Econoline]

And yet...

In this one small corner of the innerwebz, across an amazingly broad political spectrum, there is complete agreement. Maybe there is some hope, after all?

[Andrew D]

There are numerous factors in the failure, thus far, of marijuana legalization. Ignorance is one; in practice, it is irremediable: There always will be people who believe that Reefer Madness tells the truth.

Age is another: Marijuana legalization enjoys healthy margins among younger voters, but older voters tend to oppose it. Time will solve that problem.

For the other factors, follow the money: Alcohol-company money, pharmaceutical-company money, and police-union money. Money, money, money.

The alcohol companies want everyone in the US to be addicted to alcohol. Marijuana poses a threat to that.

The pharmaceutical companies want everyone in the US to pay big bucks for their medicines rather than using a medicine that people can grow in their own backyards.

(Note for those who think that personal stuff matters: I do not use marijuana. I take medications which are available to me because of the efforts of pharmaceutical companies. I am grateful for those efforts.)

The police are raking in huge piles of dollars thanks to the criminalization of marijuana. And they have been perfectly willing to spend a fraction of that money to ensure that the dollars keep rolling in.

Some of the right-wingers among us have complained about the "benefits" which teachers -- the grossly underpaid people to whom we entrust our next generation -- supposedly enjoy. But the police have a system that turns the faces of people in Greece green with envy. They can retire at 40 with full or nearly-full pensions.

The ignorant, the soon-to-be-irrelevant, the purveyors of a far more dangerous drug, and those who make fortunes off of our current drug laws: Those are the people who oppose marijuana legalization.

When you vote against marijuana legalization, you are voting for them.

[dgs49]

Andrew, thank your for your thoughts.

But consider that marijuana was popular when "we" were in college (etc), and WE swore that when we came of age we would legalize it. Who are the old people that you imagine are opposing it? We Boomers are in our 60's now - we ARE the old people. We certainly don't oppose it, and the older generation (70's and 80's) probably don't care.

And if MJ were legalized, who but the alcohol and big pharma (and big AG) would be in a better position to exploit it? They would be in a position to positively kick ass in the MJ Market. Further, they could exert influence to repress entrepreneurial MJ production in the same way that home-made wine is controlled now: You can make a few gallons for personal use, but you can't make too much or sell it to anyone. Do you have any specific information about the liquor or pharma industries lobbying against legalization?

You have written before that you feel the POLICE make money off the MJ prohibition. I don't follow. Why would "they" care? It's not like there would be police layoffs if you carved out the couple thousand MJ arrests they are currently making.

Do explain.

[Andrew D]

See, e.g., here:

Big Alcohol Fueling Opposition to California Marijuana Initiative

According to a recently filed campaign finance report, the campaign to defeat a marijuana legalization initiative in California is receiving substantial funding from the alcohol industry.

See also, e.g, here:

Exclusive: Why Can’t You Smoke Pot? Because Lobbyists Are Getting Rich Off of the War on Drugs

John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry.

* * *

... Republic Report reviewed lobbying contracts during the Prop 19 fight, and found that Lovell’s firm was paid over $386,350 from a wide array of police unions, including the California Police Chiefs Association.

The companies in the best position to make money off of marijuana legalization are the tobacco companies. Marijuana is easier to process than is tobacco (it does not require the curing essential to smokeable tobacco). The tobacco companies already have in place the mechanisms to mass-produce joints.

A dear friend of mine refers to marijuana as "my Prozac". I am not advocating marijuana as a treatment for mood disorders; I am merely observing that, at least for some people, it apparently works. And the pharmaceutical companies are deathly afraid of that.

The police get tons of money in overtime pay, etc., from the War on Freedom (commonly mislabeled the War on Drugs). Of course they want it to remain illegal: Its illegality fattens their paychecks.

[Long Run]

I don't doubt that there are financial forces at work, on both ends of the debate. The powers that be in each industry segment (whether crime enforcement, pharma, alcohol, etc.) will seek to protect their interests. At the end of the day, though, there are strong arguments against legalization, not just political calculations. Marijuana is addictive, it causes psychosis, lung damage, car accidents, etc. Those negative factors will increase dramatically with legalization. When policy makers take a look at the science and research, they know they are dealing with a dangerous drug. The argument that onre or more dangerous drugs are already legal does not answer the question of whether we better off adding another legal dangerous drug. I still come out saying the cost of criminalization exceeds the benefits of suppression, especially factoring in the loss of freedom, but it is not an obvious policy decision one way or the other.

[Gob]

Well put L-R.

Abstract
Background Cannabis policy continues to be controversial in North America, Europe and Australia.

Aims To inform this debate, we examine alternative legal regimes for controlling cannabis availability and use.

Method We review evidence on the effects of cannabis depenalisation in the USA, Australia and The Netherlands. We update and extend our previous (MacCoun & Reuter, 1997) empirical comparison of cannabis prevalence statistics in the USA, The Netherlands and other European nations.

Results The available evidence indicates that depenalisation of the possession of small quantities of cannabis does not increase cannabis prevalence. The Dutch experience suggests that commercial promotion and sales may significantly increase cannabis prevalence.

Conclusions Alternatives to an aggressively enforced cannabis prohibition are feasible and merit serious consideration. A model of depenalised possession and personal cultivation has many of the advantages of outright legalisation with few of its risks.

Ful study.

[Andrew D]

By all means, read the full study. Especially this bit:

Our judgement, based on review of the research literature, is that at present the primary harms of marijuana use (including those borne by non-users) come from criminalisation: expensive and intrusive enforcement, inequity, shock to the conscience from disproportionate sentence and a substantial (though generally non-violent) black market.

(Emphasis added.)

You want to cause harm? Keep on criminalizing marijuana.

[Andrew D]

You are engaging in a false equivalence, Long Run. Alcohol is thousands of times more dangerous than is marijuana. Simply calling them both "dangerous drugs" is like equating forcible rape with stealing candy bars.

[rubato]

How long do we persist with the failed war on drugs?

Now that we have so many privatized prisons 'growing their business' by buying politicians and elections? Forever.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

You are engaging in a false equivalence, Long Run. Alcohol is thousands of times more dangerous than is marijuana. Simply calling them both "dangerous drugs" is like equating forcible rape with stealing candy bars.

A lot more, anyway. As of 1996 the reference "courtroom toxicology" we used at the Forensic Toxicology lab only listed one instance of someone dying from the direct effects of Marijuana and that was via fibrillation.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

How long do we persist with the failed war on drugs?

Now that we have so many privatized prisons 'growing their business' by buying politicians and elections? Forever.

yrs,
rubato

And there lies the rub.

[rubato]

Let's all give it up for "Citizens United" one of the worst decisions by the worst court appointed (mostly) by the most incompetent presidents of the past 40 years.

yrs,
rubato