Once again, the Change.org website held an open forum for voting on which issues Americans want the Obama Administration to address. The results were announced and – once again – ending marijuana prohibition was one of the top issues voted on. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper discovered the same thing when he agreed to respond to questions from the online community. He was expected to respond to these questions today.
This isn’t happening because George Soros is paying large sums of money to skew these surveys or because hackers are rigging the vote. But on the other hand, it’s also not happening because marijuana prohibition is the most pressing issue in the world right now (although it has far more impact on the world around us than many of us realize). It’s happening because the issue of marijuana prohibition is the topic where the general public most readily recognizes that the words and actions of our government are thoroughly detached from reality. It’s an issue that garners a large amount of agreement between liberals and conservatives, and for which the dividing line between those who support prohibition and those who oppose it tends not to be along that ideological axis, but instead about whether or not people pay close attention to it.
When former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske was named as Obama Administrator’s drug czar, there was a glimmer of hope that all of this might change. Kerlikowske was the police chief for a city where marijuana law enforcement was the lowest priority – by voter initiative – and yet there were no negative consequences; a city that holds a festival every August where over 100,000 people gather in a park to smoke pot, buy drug paraphernalia, and make speeches in support of legalizing the drug. He was the police chief who had previously met with medical marijuana patients and made it clear that he knew that they were as far from criminals as people could possibly be. But now as drug czar, he’s done a complete 180 and has even questioned the medical use for marijuana.
Looking back, Kerlikowske’s unwillingness to make real changes should have been expected. It’s been pointed out time and time again that it’s technically within his job description to lie in order to keep making the case that marijuana should remain illegal. But that doesn’t necessarily make it ok for him to do so (and it also doesn’t help Obama much in convincing young voters that his administration is really about changing the way Washington functions). The best solution here remains to remove the position of the drug czar entirely – or to re-invent it with a radically different charter.
In the meantime, we’ll continue seeing laughable propaganda pieces in the old-guard traditional media, like this one in the Christian Science Monitor, which Kerlikowske’s predecessor as Seattle Police Chief, Norm Stamper, criticizes here. On top of Stamper’s points, I want to specifically call out some of the most egregious errors in the Christian Science Monitor piece:
On medical marijuana, which has strong public backing in opinion polls, the former Seattle police chief said that “science should determine what a medicine is, not popular vote.” As Kerlikowske pointed out, marijuana is harmful – and he has the studies to back it up.
Here’s a nine-page list of medical organizations, from the Institute of Medicine to the American College of Physicians to the American Medical Students Association, who all agree that the components in the marijuana plant have medicinal value – and that when used properly can have benefits to people with a variety of ailments. As mentioned above, when Kerlikowske was the Police Chief here in Seattle, he used to meet with patient groups and clearly knows this.
Legalization supporters argue that no one has ever died from an overdose of this “soft” drug. But here’s what “science” has found so far: Smoking marijuana can result in dependence on the drug.
Ignoring the fact that the second sentence of that paragraph doesn’t rebut the first one – and the fact that the study that they cite to claim that 30 percent of marijuana users are dependent is questionable, at best – the likelihood of becoming dependent on a drug isn’t a very persuasive argument for prohibition. If so, we’d have to outlaw tobacco and alcohol again – and completely ban the vast majority of prescription pain medications out there. Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that marijuana is less addictive than alcohol, tobacco, and most other pain medications. The Lancet Journal in the UK ranked marijuana as being more safe than both alcohol and tobacco. And as any police officer can tell you, a person who is drinking alcohol is far more of a threat to the general public than a person who is smoking pot.
It’s a claim that’s too good to be true, just as the exclamation point implies. Look at the nation’s experience with regulated alcohol. America collects nearly $15 billion a year in federal and state taxes from alcohol. But Kerlikowske says that covers less than 10 percent of the “social costs” related to healthcare, lost productivity, and law enforcement. And what about lost lives? Let’s not add marijuana to the mix of regulated substances.
So, following the Christian Science Monitor’s logic, we should outlaw alcohol again right? Well, no, of course not, and that’s why this argument is nuts. Why is that? Because the law enforcement costs of trying to implement alcohol prohibition were significantly greater. And since prohibition didn’t stop most people from drinking alcohol, the healthcare and lost productivity costs were still there. That’s why we ended alcohol prohibition, because it didn’t work. The equation isn’t much different for marijuana. In fact, because marijuana is a much safer drug, the healthcare and lost productivity costs are even less.
The Dutch – so often praised by marijuana advocates – have had to greatly ratchet back the number of legal marijuana outlets because of crime, nuisance, and increased pot usage among youth.
This is completely incorrect. Holland has implemented new restrictions on where coffeeshops can be, but youth marijuana use rates are far lower in Holland than in the United States. And the only “nuisance” has been that people from other countries like Germany have been coming to border towns to buy it legally. This is a problem that would simply disappear if it were legal elsewhere. And to emphasize the silliness of the earlier point on “social costs”, Holland rakes in nearly half-a-billion Euros in tax proceeds from their coffeeshops, but their “social costs” from drug use are no different than any other European country.
Individuals who reach age 21 without using drugs are almost certain to never use them. But according to a study by a leading source on young people and drugs, Monitoring the Future, marijuana use among teens has increased in recent years, after a decade of decline. Teens perceive less risk in use – not surprising when states approve of it as medicine. Risk perception greatly influences drug use among young people.
The numbers simply don’t back up the Christian Science Monitor’s theory here. If what they were saying is true, usage rates among young people would have increased in states that have medical marijuana laws. In fact, the opposite happened. The states that have enacted medical marijuana laws saw teenage marijuana use rates decline.
None of these talking points from Kerlikowske and his willing megaphones in the press are new. It’s the same tired old crap that gets rolled out every time drug warriors try to defend its indefensible policy on marijuana. Whether Kerlikowkse is doing this because the law requires him to – or because the Obama Administration still finds it prudent to have him do this – he’s clearly distinguishing himself as the Obama Administration’s most shameless propagandist. For a President who came into office committed to leave behind the days of ideology trumping science, there’s no one undermining that perception more right now than our former police chief.
[Deleted – off topic]
There’s a disconnect here. Corporations stand to make huge profits. Governments would see increased tax revenue. The “drug war” landscape would be positively altered and our society would realize some betterment. One would think that the combination of these things would grease the skids of change. What’s slowing this down? Is it the drug war itself? What interests could be behind the drug war that could prevent corporations and governments from wading into a river of money? After all the change we’ve seen is ending marijuana prohibition still a cultural wall that we simply can’t deal with? Something doesn’t add up.
Why don’t you guys just ban the asshole @1? He just posts the same stupid shit every day.
Going to DC changes everyone. You end up supporting the party view. This is true Republican or Democrat. I didn’t really think there was a chance that the United States would base it’s drug policy on science and reality even with a Democrat in charge, maybe a BIT more so.
It’s not as much of a disconnect as you’d think. Keep in mind, the “War on Drugs”(tm) is a huge industry itself. Like the military industrial complex (not to be confused with the actual military) it’s a business and no one is going to threaten it.
Yes governments could make a nice tax revenue based on marijuana, but I think we also always need a magical “demon” to blame for our problems. It’s the literal “scapegoat”. You need something that stays illegal and is hyped up to blame for problems. Sometimes it’s people (blacks, gypsies, gays, Catholics, Irish, Jews), and sometimes it’s a thing. We need something to simplify our fear and just project our issues onto and this works a little for that too.
As for #1, let me guess, Obama is a Kenyan hybrid space alien with here to drink our souls and outlaw Christianity before mandating communism and has a -88371% approval rating? Shocking that ‘person’ can’t make rational comments. With that ability to just hurl insults and make anti-reality fictional off topic non-sense, he should run as a Republican (or Tea-Party, same thing according to Palin and Romney)
Alki @ 3–
He’s not a Space Alien!
Good article, Lee. Kerlikowske has really been a huge disappointment. And the point about the Obama administration losing credibility with young voters over the continued propagandizing of cannabis cannot be stressed too much, especially when it is such transparent bullshit. Unfortunately, the administration is also losing credibility with us older voters who hoped we would have drug policies guided by science, common sense, and an acknowledgement of basic civil liberties, rather than ideological blinders.
Different city, same person! Same results!
It’s apparent in every Odumba action, deed and teleprompter led speech his blinders are pointing far whackamole left. You think the Chicago Thug Rahmbo doesn’t have his fingers in this too?
Lee ..
Good post.
I think we need a law suit to ban chocolate.
If Big Tobacco was a bad guy for contributing to cancer, what role has Nestle played in obesity and diabetes?
Does anyone think the brown goo is NOT addictive? Certainly the chocolate plant has more serious drugs and .. chocolate contains real psycho-actives.
I am not being sarcastic here and obviously am not serious either. However, MJ and chocolate seem to me to have very similar levels of risk to people. There is no imaginable world in which risk will not need to be balanced vs. benefit … rationally.
@7: Actually chocolate is MUCH more dangerous than pot. But about half the population would cut the other half off if chocolate were banned. Can’t have that, my man…;-)
sj–
I was thinking we need to ban any future reference to Algore..the phoney envirowhackjob!
Gore is bad for all our fiscal health.
If conservatives support marijuana legalization, it must be because they hope a competitive free market will bring down prices, saving them money.
@3 Burn marijuana, not witches!
Instead of banning pot, why not using zoning laws to concentrate it in areas of the city safely away from residential neighborhoods, like we do with porn theaters and strip joints? For example, you could let Pike Place Market vendors sell the stuff, and allow public smoking of pot only within 1000 feet of the Market. That way, people who don’t want to pay for it could get high just by breathing the air in the vicinity of the Market. That should make conservatives happy because they’ll get their pot smoke free.
Here is part of the problem with the arguement to legalize MJ: everyone keeps saying how the drug wars would go away, yadda yadda yadda….I call BS on that.
Do you REALLY think that if the state makes pot legal, and taxes and regulates the shit out of it, that people wont still just grow their own and purchase it in the black market so as not to pay the inflated govt price?
You will STILL have an illegal drug trade, because why would anyone pay $25 for a joint from the govt Pot Store, when they can get it for $5 from the local drug dealer?
I keep seeing everyone saying “hey, just treat it like booze”..Well, pot isnt like booze. Anyone can grow it for CHEAP(including mexicans)and sell it for a profit on the black market(like now), while its much more difficult and expensive to make booze(like you actually need a factory),…two completely different animals.
Make pot legal? fine, but dont expect the drug wars and illegal selling/growing/distributing to just magically go away…thats a pipe dream that has no base in reality being spewed forth by the potheads.
@13
I’ve been over this before but…
Yes, some people will grow their own. Growing pot is really easy. Growing good quality pot otoh is quite difficult. Why would it be cheaper for an illegal dealer to sell the crop vs. legal? Is a small scale producer going to be able to match the state-sanctioned agri-business large scale producer? That’s not a valid economic model for any product. (Think of it as small and artisanal product vs. large industrial. Which one is ALWAYS cheaper?)
I, and thousands of others, brew beer. I make damn good beer but not a scale that would allow me to sell it. And it took me at least a year of learning to make really good beer every batch. But it sure as hell isn’t as easy as rolling to Fred Meyer and picking up a six pack. That’s why everyone doesn’t do it.
It’s about convenience. It’s a crop, it’s seasonal what if you run out before harvest? An overwhelming majority of users will buy from a state store simply due to the convenience. Did you not notice that American’s are a lazy lot?
Add that if everyone was growing their own, they don’t need armed gangs to keep the supply routes open or to guard their crops and occasionally shoot each other, cops, bystanders, customers…
Law Enforcement cost alone makes this a no-brainer.
@14…the key factor you are missing is that the supply side is already there and established – IE illegal stuff already coming over the border, etc…
lebowski @ 13:
You are correct in that pot is easy to grow and most anyone with a 5 gallon bucket, some potting soil, water, fertilizer, and plenty of sunshine could grow pot.
The same point could be made about brewing your own beer, but it’s always a little to cumbersome, time consuming, and doing the work required from seedling starts in early spring to harvesting, trimming, drying and curing processes.
Most people would be happier just dropping $20-$40 and be done with it. Some won’t I agree.
But your assumption that no one, or not enough people would buy from a store is flat out wrong.
There’s a documentary that comes on CNBC from time-to-time called Marijuana, Inc.
One medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland shelled out nearly a million dollars in tax revenue to California and the federal government.
As far as the drug war violence, it absolutely would drop dramatically. As this documentary pointed out pot is one of the most profitable of drugs and accounts for about 80% of the entire US/Mexico border drug war cash flow.
Honestly, what do you think would happen if 80% of the drug money crossing the border suddenly dried up?
Consider this, HCR will cost about $1 trillion dollars over 10 years. The federal government, according to Marijuana, Inc. documentary, spends $11 billion dollars per year on MJ eradication.
That’s about 10% of the entire HCR costs. Add in the border enforcement, coast guard cost of search and seizure, law enforcement, court systems, incarceration, crimes related to underground economies, rehab and repeat offenders costs and it’s conceivable that a sizeable portion of the HCR costs could be offset by repealing the prohibition on MJ and spend OUR tax dollars more wisely.
@16
So your theory is that the current supply won’t take a gigantic hit if a competitive supply comes on line? Or that an organized legal growing and distribution operation can’t survive against the current distribution model?
“But now as drug czar, (Kerlikowski has) done a complete 180 and has even questioned the medical use for marijuana.”
That’s because that’s his job, per the dictates of the law that created it in the first place.
When he was Seattle’s police chief, it wasn’t, also per the dictates of law.
As much as I agree that a person has a right to fry their own brain-
As much as I agree that personal drug use within the constraints of personal alchohol use is not properly a criminal matter-
The nature of government agencies is to fight for funding. If MJ were made legal 2 things will keep law enforcement spending as much as they do currently.
First, Lebowski (odd that someone with that tag doesn’t like MJ but…) is right. Overpriced government MJ sold in something remniscent of a high school locker room will not destroy the illegal trade. It just gives local, state and federal government a different target.
Second, even if it did eradicate the illegal trade enforcement money would just be shifted to other DEA activities, or elsewhere in the law enforcement community. It isn’t as though the budgets would be cut to reflect the fairly small amount percentage wise spent on MJ interdiction.
@18…not if the idea is that the “state taxes hte shit out of it” to raise funds.
Ever compared the cost of illegal cigarettes to “legal” ones?
same ecnonomic model.
If I was a pot head, I wouldnt pay the state’s inflated, tax ridden price if I had the opportunity to buy from my local drug dealer at 1/4 the price.
@21
I think you’ve been watching too many mob movies. The retail price to the consumer of illegal cigarettes is negligible. I’d be impressed if you know a single person who knows where to get cigarettes outside of a retail establishment. The retailer, if provided with illegal goods will sell them at the normal retail price. Yes, the reservations have cheaper prices (at established retail outlets) but how many people in the Seattle metro are driving out to get their smokes?
I’m not sure what pot is going for these days but the price is artificially high. And people are still lazy. If people can get good pot, at regularly defined hours, in a regularly defined location simply by walking in with cash, they will. It’s a better alternative to calling up a dealer and picking up product at a time and place (and likely price) of the dealer’s choosing.
Bootlegging didn’t just end with the 21st Amendment and in some dry counties it still hasn’t. But how much illegal hooch is on the streets these days? The same will happen with pot.
The insinuation that there would be 25$ gub’ment joints is totally ludicrous. Even the government is smart enough to understand that you can’t inflate the price so high that no one will pay it. Also, why do you think the government will be growing pot? The taxes will be applied to marijuana grown by private corporations.
The point here is that the price paid for illegal pot today is astronomical compared to the price it would cost to produce in a legally regulated market. It costs about $60 to buy an ounce of cartel weed here in Texas ($40 if you buy in bulk) but the specific strains of pot they grow, low grade and durable enough to be grown under any conditions, costs about $1.50 an ounce to produce (and that price would most likely drop even lower with massive industrial grows). That huge markup only exists because smuggling ain’t cheap, and the cartels need to fund a criminal enterprise.
So in a commercially regulated market, the same pot that Mexican cartels sell could be sold for $5 an oz. and profits would still be huge. If you “tax the hell out of it” you could add a $5 tax, I would consider doubling the price “taxing the hell out of it”, and the price for an oz. would only be $10, 16-25% of what the cartels charge now. There is no way they could undercut that and continue to fund a massive, murderous criminal enterprise requiring expensive weaponry and massive government payoffs. Ofcourse I think 20$ per oz would be the more likely price point for a max corporate profit that keeps underground sales unprofitable.
Keep in mind I am talking about “schwagg”, the crappy weed that cartels deal. More potent strains would cost more to produce, and the tax would likely be higher, but you could probably drop the common price of $100 for an ounce of good pot to $45 or so even AFTER taxes.
The notion that no one would buy it when they could grow it is as ludicrous as saying that there is no market for vegetables because you can just grow them in your back yard, or fast food chains will never take off because you can cook the food cheaper, or beer will never sell because you can brew your own, or clothing won’t sell because you can just sew your own.
Like anything, the market will establish a price at which people will buy it in lieu of growing it and underground sales won’t be terribly profitable.
But here again, people will grow their own strains and may trade or sell their own, but the really important thing is that we are not FUNDING CARTEL VIOLENCE. And there is absolutely no way cartels can compete with a legally regulated market. Also, sure they will sell other drugs, but other drugs do NOT have anywhere NEAR the market that exists for marijuana, and the markup on other drugs is not as insanely high as pot.
Also, when legalized, I would fully support an embargo on marijuana from Mexico. So cartels could not attempt to sell their product legally. If this would take amending NAFTA then so be it (we should just trash it anyways!).
I said, “but you could probably drop the common price of $100 for an OUNCE of good pot to $45 or so even AFTER taxes.”
I meant, “but you could probably drop the common price of $100 for a QUARTER OZ. of good pot to $45 or so even AFTER taxes.”
sorry
There is a solution to the War on Drugs. Challenge your candidates for congress on their support for decrim. related bills currently in the congress. S-714 ‘to create a national criminal justice commission to look into all aspects of the use of America’s criminal justice system’, H.R. 2943 ‘To eliminate most Federal penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use…’ and H.R.2835 “To provide for the medical use of marijuana in accordance with the laws of the various States.”
I just wrote to the main candidates in my district and posted the letter on my blog, Aid & comfort. The post is titled: The Drug War of Charlie Dent, John Callahan & Jake Towne
Drug policy reform does NOT require a majority of American support to WIN. It has what it needs, a deciding margin of voters. There are enough drug reform Americans in each congressional district to make the difference in this sparse turnout off year election. The politicians know this too. So if enough people are writing to incumbents and candidates about these pieces of legislation these hacks will feel compelled to try for some votes.
IF THEY DON’T HEAR IT FROM US THEY WON’T HEAR IT!