When discussion first began over this year's Drug Control Strategy from the ONDCP (and thus, the White House), the corporate media was very friendly to the Administration spin that this was some type of 'new' policy, something different than what has come before.
Take the AP article picked up by places like Yahoo entitled New drug control strategy signals policy shift as an example.
One has to get past the headline and most of the article to even find somebody not from the Administration speaking about the policy. Both the headline and language in the article simply assumes that a policy shift has occurred.
But something interesting has been happening more recently. Even the corporate media isn't buying the Administration line so much any more.
Take the AP article picked up by a variety of outlets entitled U.S. drug war has met none of its goals. The subtitle is even harsher.
After 40 years and $1 trillion, drug use is rampant and violence pervasive
And the Administration spin about a new policy is no longer stated authoritatively. Rather, they're using this language that sets up a contradiction between the Administration's rhetorical positioning and its actual budgetary priorities.
This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.
Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.
There are a variety of ways to approach the drug war; you could fill a whole library just with the information we have on this one subject. For years, the Drug Policy Alliance has had what I consider to be the best one sentence summary of what's wrong with the drug war.
The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.
The perspective I want to bring tonight is the specific assault on science enshrined in the drug war. We Democrats like to condescendingly snub our noses at those ignorant backwater redneck moran hillbillies - aka Republicans - who are so gosh darn awful for their scientific silliness of [insert view here]. We reference studies like the one conducted recently by the Pew Center which found thatonly 6% of scientists openly identify as Republican.
But the trouble is, that comes off as pretty elitist, and ridiculous, when we have such blind spots ourselves on certain policy areas when it comes to science. And the drug war is particularly interesting for this kind of perspective because it involves absurdities in both the 'hard sciences' and the 'social sciences'. So the rest of this diary is going to be me picking apart various aspects of the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy [PDF warning] and the speech [PDF warning] that ONDCP head Gil Kerlikowske gave March 4 addressing marijuana legalization specifically in San Jose, California.
I believe very strongly that drugs are not something politicians are going to lead on until we collectively agree that the course we're on isn't working. When we're all on the same page that we want an actual shift in policy, one that respects the science rather than mocks it, we'll get it. But until then, profiteers and propagandists will rule the day.
The basic contradiction
The danger with these kinds of explorations is that they get too long. You can read/watch my shorter appeal to emotion here. But to have a calm*, wordy discussion about this requires lots of words. So I want to start with a very simple, foundational inconsistency which underpins the detail to follow.
The core scientific assault brought by the drug war is the classification system for criminalizing drugs. If you stripped away the names, if you looked solely at the data, the evidence, the science, you wouldn't be able to recreate our drug policies. And this inconsistent use of criminal penalties then has all sorts of negative unintended consequences because there are no scientific principles guiding the role of the criminal justice system in prosecuting the war on drugs.
None. Zero. Nada.
Short metaphysical parenthetical. This is not to say any drug laws are anti-science. There are a variety of criteria by which we could establish laws. The point is simply that the laws we've got, and the ways we go about enforcing those laws, are what lack scientific rigor.
Okay, I have a half hour of my life to kill. Let's get to a few specific examples already.
- Broad, sweeping statements that become quite comical once you think about them. My favorite example here might be from the strategy's intro to Congress from Obama.
Drug use endangers the health and safety of every American, depletes financial and human resources, and deadens the spirit of many of our communities.
If true, and if criminalization is the answer to this truth, then we should criminalize drug use. I mean, this is really quite simple. If breathing, swallowing, injecting, and/or absorbing foreign molecular compounds does these dastardly things, and if the solution is outlawing them, then let's do it already. Alcohol and nicotine, most people know, are dangerous drugs. Did you know about acetylsalicylic acid? Methylphenidate? Oxycodone? These aren't even simply recreational drugs. We give them to people as medicine.
What's silly about all this is that the reader is supposed to infer the word 'some' before that statement. You see, if it meant 'all', then it'd be so ridiculous people would laugh out loud. We have lots of recreational drugs people use, and lots more prescription drugs people use, and lots more over the counter drugs people use. And that's precisely what the authors of such statements should be ashamed of: different drugs have different effects. The notion that one can make blanket statements like this shows a complete lack of care for the actual substance of the statement.
It's crass, baseless, anti-science fear mongering, plain and simple.
- Pretending to take into account reasonable perspectives and stakeholders.
Kerlikowske starts his strategy preface right off with a bang.
The development of this Strategy was informed by scientific breakthroughs in the prevention and treat- ment fields, innovations in law enforcement, and the thoughtful advice of Congress, Federal agencies, State and local partners, civic and professional organizations, and hundreds of concerned citizens around the country. In following President Obama’s charge to seek a broad range of input for the Strategy, I gained a renewed appreciation of how deeply concerned Americans are about drug use.
That sounds great. It's what many of us wish happened. The trouble is, it's patently false. Kerlikowske has been going around telling people what's going to happen - and what's not going to happen. This is from his speech in California, where residents have already made their voices heard about medical marijuana and where a broader vote is on the ballot this year.
As I’ve said from the day I was sworn in, marijuana legalization – for any purpose – is a non-starter in the Obama Administration. I’d like to explain why we take this position.
That's not exactly what I'd call listening skills, or as he wrote in the strategy, seeking 'a broad range of input'.
- Deceptively interchanging various meanings of words and phrases involving drugs.
Back to Kerlikowske's preface in the strategy.
Drug overdose deaths surpass gunshot deaths in our country, and in 16 states, overdose deaths are a more common cause of accidental death than car crashes. Drugged driving has now been identified at higher levels than alcohol-impaired driving. Prescription drug abuse is at record levels.
A quick read of this misses some very interesting sleights of hand here. Notice there are four different phrases employed for drugs: 'drug overdose deaths', 'drugged-driving', 'alcohol-impaired driving', and 'prescription drug abuse'. The rhetorical purpose of this is to get you to think that these are different categories, and for you the reader to attach 'illicit' to the first two categories. You see, Kerlikowske can't actually say illicit because then it would make the statement an outright lie rather than a deceptively technical truth.
Since the CDC breaks out mortality by segregating 'alcohol-induced causes' from 'drug-induced causes' [PDF Warning] it creates this lovely ability to compare alcohol to essentially all other drugs, while making it sound like it's a comparison between alcohol and illegal drugs. The absurdity of this thus becomes obvious. Most of the 'drug overdose deaths' are from - legal drugs! And some of the overdose deaths of illegal drugs are due to criminalization, not the underlying drugs (in particular, increased potency since the penalties usually vary by weight, impurities in unregulated drugs - like e coli in food where regulation has been weakened, and people who delay medical care due to the high probability of legal consequences). Of course there are higher 'drugged driving' levels than 'alcohol-impaired driving' levels. Alcohol is one drug. Drugged driving includes however many drugs Kerlikowske wants to include. This is like saying American league baseball teams are hitting more home runs than Albert Pujols.
In detail, here's all the stuff in the table for drug-induced causes, followed by the much shorter list of what's in alcohol-induced causes.
NOTE: Causes of death attributable to drug-induced mortality include ICD–10 codes D52.1, D59.0, D59.2, D61.1, D64.2, E06.4, E16.0, E23.1, E24.2, E27.3, E66.1, F11.0–F11.5, F11.7–F11.9, F12.0–F12.5, F12.7–F12.9, F13.0–F13.5, F13.7–F13.9, F14.0–F14.5, F14.7–F14.9, F15.0–F15.5, F15.7–F15.9, F16.0–F16.5, F16.7–F16.9, F17.0, F17.3–F17.5, F17.7–F17.9, F18.0–F18.5, F18.7–F18.9, F19.0–F19.5, F19.7–F19.9, G21.1, G24.0, G25.1, G25.4, G25.6, G44.4, G62.0, G72.0, I95.2, J70.2–J70.4, K85.3, L10.5, L27.0–L27.1, M10.2, M32.0, M80.4, M81.4, M83.5, M87.1, R50.2, R78.1–R78.5, X40–X44, X60–X64, X85, and Y10–Y14. In 2006, the list of drug-induced codes was modified to include two new ICD–10 codes, Drug-induced acute pancreatitis (ICD–10 code K85.3) and Drug-induced fever (ICD–10 code R50.2); see ‘‘Technical Notes.’’
NOTE: Causes of death attributable to alcohol-induced mortality include ICD–10 codes E24.4, F10, G31.2, G62.1, G72.1, I42.6, K29.2, K70, K85.2, K86.0, R78.0, X45, X65, and Y15. In 2006, the list of alcohol-induced codes was modified to include a new ICD–10 code, Alcohol-induced acute pancreatitis (ICD–10 code K85.2); see ‘‘Technical Notes.’’ Inclusion of the new code may affect comparability of data between 2006 and previous years; see ‘‘Technical Notes.’’
One list is a little longer than the other. In short, alcohol is the most dangerous drug in America due to its combination of potential danger per dose and high number of doses consumed nationally. That's why Kerlikowske has to compare it to drugs generally, because by any measure where it has to stand on its own merits, alcohol would be criminalized before most (currently) illicit drugs.
Beyond all that, this kind of framing is yet more of the anti-science fear mongering. Over 2 million Americans die every year. Comparisons to things like gunshot deaths don't provide a valuable context; they simply prejudice the discussion. It's actually quite rare to find yourself the victim of a homicide specifically or any gunshot wound generally. We live in a largely peaceful, stable society. And to the extent the drug war has an impact on that, it's adding to the violence, not adding to the stability.
- Arbitrary goals devoid of any link to the policies.
From the strategy's executive summary
Endorsing a balance of prevention, treatment, and law enforcement, the Strategy calls for a 15-percent reduction in the rate of youth drug use over 5 years and similar reductions in chronic drug use and drug-related consequences such as drug deaths and drugged driving.
15%? What does that mean? The other 85% of youth drug use is acceptable? What's going to work in this five year period that failed in the previous several five year periods?
The data is overwhelming. The vast majority of teenagers say marijuana, for example, is readily available. That's with the drug war, spending billions of dollars a year on 'prevention, treatment, and law enforcement'. We're the generation that grew up having our school education interrupted by non-curriculum blathering like DARE and GREAT. And fun factoid, DARE's name actually highlights the inconsistencies in drug policy. It stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. That's a laudable goal; virtually everyone agrees with that. Drug use, on the other hand, isn't a public policy problem at all. It's a matter for families and individuals and healthcare professionals and clergy and so forth.
- Show me your checkbook, I'll show you your priorities.
Budgets are one of the best ways of seeing things, because they push past the rhetoric to what's actually happening.
The strategy proposes over $15.5 billion in direct federal drug control spending. $3.9 billion is for treatment and $1.7 billion is for prevention. The other $9.9 billion is for law enforcement (broken out by domestic law enforcement, interdiction, and international support). For example, did you know that the DOD is in the police action business?
Joint Interagency Task Force South conducts counterdrug operations to detect, monitor, and interdict the flow of illicit drugs and other narco-terrorist threats to the security of the United States.
How's that working out? Are we keeping the country free of imported drugs? And speaking of terrorism, the evidence is quite clear. Drug criminalization funds terrorists, from South America to Afghanistan.
- Blaming drugs for the problems of criminalization.
Sentences like this are a work of art.
Break the Cycle of Drug Use, Crime, Delinquency, and Incarceration: Drug use is often interwoven with criminal and delinquent behavior that disrupts family, neighborhood, and community life in fundamental and long-lasting ways.
Technically true, but amazingly un-scientific in its total lack of curiosity about why, exactly, drug use is caught up in a cycle of crime, delinquency, and incarceration.
The answer, of course, is that the whole construct is a farce. It's embarrassing, as embarrassing as arguing that the world is 6,000 years old or denying heliocentrism.
Criminalizing drug use is what makes drug users involved in crime, delinquency, and incarceration. Criminalization is what disrupts family, neighborhood, and community life. This is one of the core arguments for why criminalization is such a bad policy.
If criminalization 'helped', then we'd criminalize all drugs (or at least, all recreational drugs).
- Blatantly assaulting fields from anthropology to economics.
Consider this paragraph
Disrupt Domestic Drug Trafficking and Production: Drug-trafficking organizations move large quantities of illicit drugs into the United States and distribute these drugs throughout the Nation. These same groups, at times working through street and prison gangs, employ criminal networks that return the illicit proceeds of the drug trade—along with an array of weapons—across our borders. This trade imposes enormous negative consequences on the safety, health, and security of our citizens. The resources of the United States must be marshaled to disrupt the organizations that conduct this trade
Until this point, I'm mostly drawing from the hard sciences. We know certain drugs have certain properties. The laws, though, are written with great indifference to those properties. Here I switch a little bit to the social sciences.
Unfortunately, the 2010 policy still can't bring itself to accept basic facts about economics and social interactions. People want drugs. When drugs are illegal, only illegal organizations will provide them. When organizations are operating illegally, they tend to have a workforce that is disproportionately utilizing 'street and prison gangs' and employing 'criminal networks'. When contracts can't be enforced in court, 'an array of weapons' tends to be substituted. If you want to marshal a disruption of the illegal drug trade, that's easy. Stop criminalizing recreational drug use.
The difference between wine stores and drug traffickers is the legality of the products, not the chemical properties of the products.
- Pretending the problem is a lack of information.
Consider this generally
Science should help inform policy and rigorously evaluate its effects. This can be possible only with near real-time information on drug use patterns, associated problems, and the results of previously implemented policies.
and this point specifically
Assessing the availability, price, and purity of illicit drugs on the street so it is known when our programs have a measurable impact on drug markets
A measurable impact on drug markets? We've been at war against drugs for decades. And they're still available. What kind of real-time information do you need to tell you that criminalization doesn't create a drug free America?
The evaluation the strategy is looking for is the opposite of rigorous. Even a cursory glance at the results of previously implemented policies would show that prohibition of recreational drugs is an abject failure. Drugs are bad, drug laws are worse.
- Omitting discussion of the problems caused by criminalization.
One of the hallmarks of a less than rigorous strategy document is when it spends lots of time evaluating strengths and opportunities and little time evaluating weaknesses and threats. In order to offer a scientific perspective, you have to consider everything, not just the good things. In order to perform cost-benefit analysis, you have to weigh the benefits against the costs. Even ignoring the economic inefficiencies, where is the detailed discussion about undermining the Constitution or weakening public health or destroying families or the overtly racist outcomes in our criminal justice system?
Not in this document.
A few concluding thoughts.
There are a variety of reasons to support the criminalization of drugs. What I ask is that you apply scientific principles, rather than those of empty propaganda whose purpose is to line the pockets of the profiteers and fear mongers.
If you believe that recreational drugs are morally wrong, and that government has to send a message to kids that drugs aren't acceptable, then advocate that as a principle. That means alcohol. Nicotine. Caffeine. It means you should think about prescription and OTC drug usage, too.
If you recognize that our biggest problems are with prescription drugs, then focus efforts there. Let recreational drug users make their own choices, free of legal consequences for picking the 'wrong' drug to enjoy.
If you believe that drugs are harmful for both the individual and the larger community, then embrace policies that minimize harms. And advocate for this holistically: sugar, fat, and salt are quite harmful, too, and alcohol is all over our society, from commercials that kids watch to restaurants where kids eat to stores where kids shop. Don't fall for the trap that asserts that criminalization reduces the harms of drugs. It actually increases the harm. Or to say it differently, the criminalization cure is worse than the disease of drug use.
There are a number of small moves in the right direction in the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. We shouldn't lose sight of that. The problem is that they're overwhelmed by the overriding need to ignore science in the furtherance of the war on drugs. Ultimately, this has to be addressed by Congress via repeal of the Controlled Substances Act and similar prohibition legislation (or, less likely - but more interesting - a Supreme Court that decided to start supporting the Constitution).
But in the meantime, that doesn't absolve the Executive Branch for turning out yet another drug control strategy that finds new ways of saying the same 'ole anti-science stuff. We are set for another year of arrests of huge numbers of Americans who happen to be disproportionately poor and non-white. We are set for another year of spending billions of dollars that do nothing to bring about the fantasy that is a drug free America. We are set for another year where we don't decide whether what we want is a drug free America, or whether we like our recreational drugs, prescription drugs, and unhealthy foods.
*Note, end calm discussion here. Begin two paragraphs of dripping sarcasm...
Heavens to Betsy, we can't have people thinking that caffeine is a more dangerous drug than marijuana. We can't have people figure out that recreational drugs like cocaine and amphetamines are similar to medicines like Ritalin and Codeine. We can't have people learn that each year, alcohol alone causes more deaths than all illicit drugs combined or that each year, aspirin causes more deaths than marijuana has caused in the entire history of human civilization. We have to erase all our institutional memory of alcohol prohibition - from how the temperance movement was so quaint as to actually amend the Constitution to make alcohol prohibition legal to how alcohol prohibition failed so miserably that the Constitution was amended again to end it.
How are the prison profiteers and the suppliers to the military police state supposed to make their massive profits if we apply basic scientific principles to their industry? They need gobermint handouts, gosh darn it! And it's our patriotic duty to give them our money while trashing the Constitution and declaring war on families living in poverty. And note of course, this applies in every field from actual military contracting to overseeing oil companies. It's a pattern that we have termed 'the war on science' when Republicans do it. But unfortunately, it finds its way into documents produced by Democrats, too. That's something we have to push back against strongly if we want to have any credibility in other policy areas. The 2010 National Drug Control Strategy is still as anti-science as the worst polemics in support of, say, 'healthy marriage' or 'abstinence-only education' or the great 'global warming hoax'.
You can read this again at The Seminal at FDL.