John Tierney reports this shocking revelation: our marijuana control doesn't work and no one -- particularly the government -- wants to admit it.
Now that the first five years' results are available, the campaign can officially be called a failure, according to an analysis of federal drug-use surveys by Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. The prevalence of marijuana use (as measured by the portion of the population that reported using it in the previous month) declined by 6 percent, far short of the 25-percent goal, and that decline was partially offset by a slight increase in the use of other illicit drugs. As a result, the overall decline in drug use was less than 4 percent.
Dr. Gettman's report was sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project Foundation, a group opposed to current drug laws, but it draws on the same five years of federal drug-survey data used by John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. When the data became available this year, the White House's press release hailed the numbers as evidence of "tremendous progress" after five years, but the press release failed to mention the original goal of a 25-percent reduction in overall drug use. Instead, the White House highlighted reductions for specific drugs (like cocaine) and among specific groups (like teenagers).Such selective press releases, Dr. Gettman told me, have been the norm for two decades because there's been so little overall progress in the federal war on drugs. In 1991, he noted, the official National Drug Control Strategy's goal was to reduce number of illicit drug users in America to 7.25 million within a decade. But a decade later, in 2002, the number was actually 19.5 million, and by last year it had risen to 19.9 million, Dr. Gettman said.
As a physician (eventually), I will advise my patients against the use of marijuana, much as I willl advise them against smoking cigarettes. Both have adverse health consequences. But from a public health perspective, this strategy of trying to limit marijuana use by an outright ban is unproductive nonsense.
Later in the article, Tierney mentions that, "Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project notes, there was an even larger reduction in the rate of cigarette smoking -- from 13 percent to 9.8 percent -- among those same youths over the same five-year period, and there weren't hundreds of thousands of people being arrested for tobacco possession every year."
So tell me again: why do we spend millions of dollars and arrest thousands of people for a policy that ultimately does not make a lick of difference?
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Because the government does not back down, no matter what the facts on the ground are. We see this in military issues, the 'anti terrorist' fiascoes, and we see it in the drug war. Once policy is set, it simply gets entrenched deeper. And often the more the policy is demonstrated ineffective or downright wrong, it gets entrenched deeper.
Marijuana gets people stoned. Simply making it legal would make getting stoned extremely cheap, which would hurt the beer, wine, liquor, and pharmaceutical industries. It would also hurt the bar business.
Legalizing it, and taxing it, would force the government into adjusting policies to maximize the profit function so as to squeeze as much revenue out of marijuana as possible, which would drive up the price, putting it out of reach of the poor, who -- lacking health insurance and unable to afford prescription drugs -- would then turn to untaxed marijuana, and we'd be back to a war on drugs, only now it will be Revenue which wages the war.
I'd say legalize it and leave it alone. Let people grow all they want. When it's as cheap as crabgrass, people don't need to smoke it. They can bake it into food, brew it into tea, grind it into soups and stews. And they can export it to the world.
Ah, you refer to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Nonsense. The government's policy has been very effective.
Five years ago, people were growing a few plants here and there and selling to their friends.
Now, you can't hardly find marijuana for sale at all, unless you know someone who knows someone who has a line on one of these big mostly Mexican commercial operations using lots of pesticide in the National Forest.
Of course the government's policy worked.
Just like they wanted it to, I expect.
It's a lot easier to get good PR by stamping out an occasional huge grower than dealing with the nuisance value of all those pesky little citizens.
Tierney never seems to understand this stuff.
With US pot production now at an estimated $36 billion a year (making it our #1 ag product) it is easy to say pot's Prohibition has failed.
But if zealotry is to succeed we must fail beyond measure until we are so mired in Orwellian doublespeak that common sense will appear as extremism.
What? We're already there...? Well heck, never mind.
99 arrests an hour for pot in the US... that is success! A gigantic bureaucracy that mimics the Wizard of Oz? That is success! Racial bigotry as a foundation for law? Thats SOP...
John Walters is a coward, hiding behind the castle walls... "Hey John, come out, come out, wherever you are..."
In the Netherlands cannabis is sold to people over 18 yr in regulated, cozy 'coffee shops'. Also magic mushrooms are sold in 'smart shops'. And alcohol is kept separated away in 'bars'. Society functions completely fine. And cannabis use is actually lower than in the US.
The ACLU is now working to end cannabis prohibition and institute a drug policy that respects human rights.
http://www.marijuanaconversation.org/
http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/index.html
Maybe the government is winning ... just not in my neighborhood. In the 30+ years that I've enjoyed cannabis, I've never once had a hard time finding it. There's such a great variety now-a-days too - gee-whiz, it's good to be alive!
Prison is not good for your health. If federal drug policy really had the people's health in mind, they wouldn't focus on putting users in prison. Users are put in prison in order to convince you that drug users are evil. Drug policy is all about creating a bogeyman, convincing the public to fear that bogeyman, and using that fear to manipulate people. The government doesn't think it wins when the number of users goes down. Government thinks it wins when fear of drug users goes up.
Because liberals use marijuana.