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More Fun With Numbers at ONDCP

Press releases from the Office of National Drug Control Policy are so distorted and misleading, they are better suited to make paper airplanes than inform the public.

Yet another example of their ritualistic deception campaign occurred this week with the announcement that youth drug use has reached exciting lows:

New Survey Shows Youth Drug Use at Five Year Low, 25 Percent Drop in Pot Use Among Teen Boys

Overall illicit drug use among teens ages 12-17 is at a five year low, according to the largest and most comprehensive study of drug use in the United States, released today. [PushingBack.com]

You'd be forgiven for thinking this means youth drug use has been going down recently. But alas, it has not.

Illegal drug use among U.S. teens didn't drop for the first time since 2002, according to a government report released Thursday.
…

Overall drug use rates had fallen steadily before last year. But last year's slowdown threatens to undermine President Bush's stated goals to cut drug abuse by 25% by 2007. [WebMD]

Kudos to WebMD for doing some actual research instead of mindlessly repeating ONDCP's predictable propaganda. If there's a story here, it is that a downward trend in youth drug use may be leveling off and that ONDCP's goals might not be achieved.

Now, to be fair, ONDCP isn't really lying here. They're merely feigning excitement about a downward trend that actually ended a year ago. Ultimately, youth drug use rises and falls for reasons so far beyond the government's control that they should be neither credited nor blamed regardless of what happens.

Jacob Sullum has more.

Marijuana Charge From 25 Years Ago Prevents Man From Coaching Little League

There is just no limit to how stupid our society can become thanks to drug prohibition:
A Bourne, Mass., man with a decades-old marijuana-possession charge on his record was recently banned from coaching youth sports after the town started conducting criminal-background checks, the Cape Cod Times reported Sept. 4.

Gary Hapenny, 46, pled guilty to misdemeanor marijuana possession in 1982 and paid a $62 fine. But the town of Bourne bars anyone with a narcotics-related offense from using town facilities, lumping people like Hapenny in with murders, rapists, kidnappers, and child molesters. [Join Together]
Maybe this is Gary Hapenny's fault for trying to live a normal life in a town run by idiots. Unsurprisingly, it appears that his marijuana use 25 years ago hasn’t affected his coaching ability today:
David Rondeau, the head coach of Hapenny's football team, said, "Gary's been coaching football with me for the last two years, and the parents and kids love him…"

That's the drug war for you: shielding children from people they love based on arbitrary criteria born from irrational prejudices. Why take the time to judge someone based on their character when you can just run their name through a database?

The lesson here is that we must always use our brains when making policy. If you try to protect children without thinking, you'll end up hurting them. Rules must bear some relationship to their intended purpose, lest they should become an obstacle to the healthy functioning of our society.

This may seem a small matter when stacked against the drug war's daily transgressions. But it serves to illustrate how drug prohibition is so much worse than the sum of its parts. It consists of a million injustices, both large and small, that destroy vital relationships and collectively rot our culture. It is hard to imagine something more mindless and insane than banning a Little League coach over a misdemeanor pot arrest from 1982, but we needn't use our imaginations here. If nothing else, the drug war can be counted upon to deliver new calamities of escalating stupidity with each passing day.

Anti-Drug Researchers Claim That All High Schools are Either "Drug Infested" or "Drug Free"

Anti-drug activists are so desperate to infect society with their fears and anxieties that they routinely make up statistics designed to terrify parents and policy-makers. Such is the case with Joseph Califano of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) who announced today that 80% of high schools are "drug-infested."

Only a moment's inspection is required to discover that the people behind this research are insane. They begin by defining two types of schools:

Drug Infested: Schools at which the students surveyed had witnessed some form of drug activity

Drug Free: Schools at which the students surveyed had not witnessed drug activity

It is just so obvious that most schools are neither infested with, nor entirely free of drugs. Everything in this report is based on a false dichotomy that prevents any meaningful analysis. Califano argues that parents should remove their children from drug infested schools; a surprising declaration given that he puts 80% of schools in this category.

Jacob Sullum offers a typically superb refutation of the finer points of the study, but I want to emphasize one additional important point: the reason groups like CASA can do crazy things like claim that all schools are either drug infested or drug free is because the media never holds them accountable. The entire premise of this study is ridiculous on its face, and there is no excuse for the failure of the press to readily observe that something is wrong with this report.

Protecting children from drugs and other safety threats is an important discussion. Yet, this conversation goes nowhere when it is based on transparently nonsensical propaganda from hardcore anti-drug extremists. If Califano were correct that 4 out of 5 schools were really this dangerous, we'd already know about it.

It is also strange that Joseph Califano, who thinks the drug problem is worse than ever, advocates the continuation of the exact policies that got us here. He's a psycho, but he's right about one thing: something's got to change.

Alito Free Speech Comments -- a Hint on "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Case?

Drug WarRant spotted the following comments by Justice Alito, printed by the Washington Post, comments that suggest he might go the right way in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" free speech case:
"I'm a very strong believer in the First Amendment and the right of people to speak and to write," [...] "I would be reluctant to support restrictions on what people could say." [...] "it's very dangerous for the government to restrict speech."
View pictures from the March demonstration outside the Court here.

Drugs to Vaccinate You... Against Drugs!

My friend Grant Smith over at Drug Policy Alliance has commented on NIDA research to develop vaccinations and the philosophical implications of "robbing entire future generations of the basic human right to have freedom of choice and sovereignty over their bodies and minds." As a follow-up, I'd like to point out here the danger from a straight medical perspective. The questions of whether a vaccine will work, what its side effects may be, and what the likelihood is of experiencing such side effects are questions that go along with the development of any new medication. But there is something fundamentally different -- medically and scientifically -- about the concept of a vaccine to permanently disable a person from experiencing the effects of ingesting a drug. First, the neurological system that goes to work when one tries to "get high" is intimately tied to the rest of our neurology -- getting a thrill from chocolate or a rush from exercise, for example, involves some of the same chemical interactions in the brain that are involved in smoking a cigarette or snorting cocaine. I'm not saying that the acts are the same, but they are biochemically similar and related. They have to be -- each of us only has one brain, after all. Second, most drugs, both legal and illegal, either are used medically now or are highly similar to drugs that are used medically now. Cocaine and methamphetamine are both schedule II substances -- highly regulated, but used in medicine. Meth is from the same family as the widely used Ritalin. Heroin is a close variant of morphine. I don't know of current medical uses for nicotine, but I don't think it can be categorically ruled out for all time. Could a vaccination to block the euphoric effects of these drugs interfere with the ability of the same or similar drugs to produce the medical benefits for which they are also used? The only way to really know for sure is to do test people for it. But because only a fraction of all children go on to experience the medical problems that would be treated by the drugs, to do such a test and have sufficient data for it to be meaningful would require vastly expanding the number of kids who have to be given the vaccination initially as part of the research. And possibly excepting Ritalin use, the data would not come in for several decades, because most people acquire the afflictions for which the medications are used late in life. So in addition to the disturbing philosophical implications that Grant has explored, I really see this direction as inherently reckless from a straight medical perspective -- there is just no truly reliable way to know whether the treatment administered to toddlers or grade-schoolers now could put them in a box with respect to medical treatment down the road -- there's just no feasible way to gather enough data in advance, and if we did we might still not find out for 70 years. Rank this one right up there with the drug-fighting franken-fungus -- don't go there!

Pictures from the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Free Speech Supreme Court Demonstration and Press Conference

UPDATE: Drug War Chronicle feature report now available here online. DRCNet associate director David Guard attended the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" free speech demonstration outside the Supreme Court today, and took pictures for the benefit of those of us who couldn't make it there ourselves. Here are some of the highlights: Students demonstrating at the courthouse: Ken Starr, counsel for the bad guys: Former US drug czar Barry McCaffrey (also there for the bad guys): More demonstration and press conference pictures (click the "read full post" or title link in this post to see the rest if you don't already see them):

Obligatory Comment on the Toddlers-Smoking-Pot Video

I'd just as soon not touch this with a 10-foot pole, but I fear that ignoring it could make us look scared. We're not.

The highly publicized video of toddlers being forced to smoke marijuana is disgusting. It's child abuse, and when confronted by such provocative images it's important for reformers to remember that we're the only people with a plan for protecting children from drugs. After all, the drug war certainly didn’t protect these children.

There's nothing the drug war can do to prevent outrages like this, but there are a few ways in which it makes them more likely to occur. The drug war eliminates age requirements for drug purchases by creating a black market. The drug war has incentivized drug dealers to actually employ children, and it creates new job opportunities with each arrest.

More importantly perhaps, the drug war has broken up families at alarming rates, creating vast opportunities for events like this to occur. Perhaps widespread media coverage of this story will reveal more about the circumstances surrounding it. We've heard from a grandparent, but we don’t yet know anything about the parents. Whether incarceration plays a role here remains to be seen, but the odds of that are unfortunately quite good.

Still, for all its failings, the drug war provides no excuse for the conduct of the teenagers depicted in this video. They're criminals and they're exactly the sort of people we want police going after. Now if we could somehow manage to stop arresting so many people who don't deserve it, perhaps we could better attend to creeps like these.

Don't Talk To The Kids About Drugs

Seriously, just don't. Because if you mention drugs to children for any purpose other than to terrify them, you'll make national news for being a bastard.

That's exactly what happened to a high school teacher in New Mexico who mentioned meth on a math test. From KOB-TV.com:

Teacher Will Klundt’s question reads: “Smoky J. sells meth. Smoky’s source says he has to sell a G’s worth of meth by the end of the month. If Smoky sold $245 the first week and $532 the second week, how much money must Smoky still make if he wants to avoid the beat down from his connection?”
...
[Moriarty High School Principal] Marshall refused to discuss what, if any, disciplinary action will be or has been taken against Klundt.

Could this be because there isn't yet a rule against innocuous acknowledgements that drug dealers exist? Surely the school board must now convene to determine the appropriate sanction for teachers who mention drugs without adding, in the same breath, that they'll turn you into a walking freak show. This is necessary, because the hippies that pass for teachers these days aren’t worth the aluminum it takes to roll 'em out of town in a trashcan.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association thinks that movies should be rated 'R' if they depict smoking. They got the idea from a study showing that kids who watch movies are more likely to smoke, or some such nonsense. I don't know. I refuse to even read that crap.

You could write a book about how stupid this is, consisting mostly of long chapters listing activities more dangerous than smoking that are allowed in 'PG' movies. But it's preferable to censorship for those of us old enough to watch whatever movies we want. I'd rather watch I Love Lucy on the Playboy Channel than have to explain to a child why Ricky Ricardo's hand is blurry all the time.

The 'slippery slope' problem presents itself here, but this level of hysteria is typically reserved for drugs, sex, and trans fats. To its credit, NPR gave airtime this morning to the idea that excessive eating is just as deserving of an 'R' rating as cigarette smoking. I grinned for a moment, but then paused to wonder if maybe they should shut up about that.

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