Lying Doesn't Work So Well in the Age of Google

Lying Doesn't Work So Well in the Age of Google

I have been receiving emails for some days from someone who was concerned that my PajamasMedia piece about marijuana and increased psychosis risk was being "misused" by evil people whose primary goal is "HARM MAXIMIZATION"--people whose primary goal is to throw as many people into prison as possible for drug abuse. 

I wasn't quite sure where this guy was going, but I tried to engage in a polite conversation, explaining that while I don't support decriminalization, the primary goal needs to be reducing demand by making kids, especially, aware of the substantial risks involved in using marijuana.  Education has to be the primary strategy in reducing pot use, because interdiction doesn't work--and leads to its own set of problems.

The latest email insists:

I am a volunteer medical patient advocate who specializes in human rights. I personally feel that decriminalization is a moral imperative and is inevitable given the facts but if you want to argue against decriminalization I am sure I can find a decrim activist to engage you.

Intriguing description of himself: "volunteer medical patient advocate who specializes in human rights."  (Rather like the whimsical way that certain persons driving their Cadillacs on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley used to be called "self-employed, mobile, alternative pharmaceutical retailers.")  So I Googled his name: Michael Kravitz. And what did I find?

Hey, that guy is pretty good: I was sitting in the crime subcommittee chamber of the Virginia House listening to my mentor Eric Sterling speak to the Members, when the Army veteran who would soon address the Members on the issue of medical marijuana whispered about how good Eric was. I smiled. Read this analysis by the event’s organizer Michael Kravitz.

“Eric Sterling www.cjpf.org/, www.LEAP.cc was the star witness in favor of Decriminalization HB1134. Eric rebuffed the straw men* that Delegate Bell threw in his way of 43 year olds selling to 3rd graders etc. with righteous indignation and roundly scolded the Delegates for their grade school pranks* of putting a tray of brownies* in the Delegates lounge or disrupting Delegate Morgan’s House floor speech with Cheech and Chong jokes showing that he was paying close attention to local politics which hit pay dirt as Delegate Bell’s posse* had pulled those pranks. Eric said that such jokes and pranks showed they believed that marijuana use wasn’t a real problem and referred to real problems such as swine flu.”

I'm not going to bother talking to this guy anymore. His emails are full of the religious fanaticism that turns everyone who disagrees with him into evil.  And this is not surprising; there are a lot of people for whom marijuana is a god.  Pretending that he is not a "decrim advocate" when his organization's blog makes it clear that he organizes events for marijuana decriminalization just shows how far the pot worshipers are prepared to go to accomplish their ends.

Is Congress Going To Add Another Drug To The War on Drugs?

Is Congress Going To Add Another Drug To The War on Drugs?

One of the traditional arguments for decriminalizing marijuana is that there are other drugs that are even more dangerous that are legal, such as alcohol and tobacco. As I have pointed out in the past, it isn't immediately clear that this is correct; users of marijuana are at 40% increased risk of developing psychosis later in life. As I have repeatedly pointed out, while most people that drink alcohol don't have a problem with it, there is a big fraction of people for whom alcohol is a huge problem, leading to murder, rape, child molestation, drunk driving, industrial accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and many other less substantial problems. (Many other intoxicants have similar problems, less commonly, because those other intoxicants are illegal, and therefore less frequently used.)

Now I see that Congress is voting on a bill to give the bureaucrats a lot more authority to regulate tobacco. From the April 2, 2009 Greensboro (N.C.) Telegram:

WASHINGTON DC - The United States House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco and cigarettes. The bill now heads to the US Senate, where Senator Richard Burr is expected to lead opposition to the proposed law.

Officially called the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," the bill passed by a vote of 298-112 and was sponsored by long-time tobacco industry opponent Representative Henry Waxman, D-California.

I heard Dr. Dean Edell discussing this bill yesterday, and being a liberal, Edell was really, really enthusiastic about it, suggesting that the FDA might use its authority to treat tobacco like other controlled substances. This account from the March 31, 2009 CNN Money indicates that the authority wouldn't go that far:

The bill would see the FDA assume regulatory authority over cigarette makers. It would not allow the agency to ban tobacco sales outright, but would let it approve any new product coming to market.
The FDA would have extensive authority over the way cigarettes are marketed - especially to youths. It would leave the door open to an increase in the current minimum age threshold to buy cigarettes of 18.
The agency would also be allowed to ban flavored additives to cigarettes.
It would levy a fee on tobacco companies to pay for the increased costs the FDA would face from regulating the industry.

Of course, the Smoker-in-Chief supports it:

Earlier Tuesday, Kathleen Sebelius, who is Obama's nominee to be Health and Human Services Secretary, told a Senate panel that she also is a firm believer that the FDA is the appropriate body to regulate cigarettes.
"I support the idea that the FDA will regulate tobacco," Sebelius said during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Committee. "The president has supported tobacco regulation within the FDA."

I generally support regulation of alcohol and other intoxicants because people do stupid things while intoxicated, and there is a sufficient body of evidence that intoxicants are a factor in creating mental illness. Not every regulation makes sense; there is often a point where increased regulation produces diminishing returns or the law of unintended consequences actually makes the problem worse. Prohibition is one of those reminders that some regulation might have done considerable good, but a complete ban was too much. Prohibition of distilled alcohol, but leaving beer and wine legal, for example, might have reduced alcoholism and some of the destructive social effects, without producing an entire criminal industry. Taxing cigarettes at $2 a pack can raise revenue and act as a slight discouragement to smoking; raising the tax to $20 a pack just creates an opportunity for criminal enterprises.

I don't have any enthusiasm for tighter regulation of tobacco, even though it is a vile habit, and causes an enormous number of premature deaths every year, because the hazard is largely confined to its users. (I haven't kept up on the claims and counterclaims about second hand smoke; it seems implausible that second hand smoke is more dangerous than those who are actually inhaling.)

What I am rather tired of is the claim that those evil conservatives are responsible for the continuation of drug laws. Liberals are now preparing to add another drug to the list: tobacco. I am even more tired of those who argue that marijuana should be legal (because it causes no significant harm), but alcohol and tobacco should be illegal (because those drugs do enormous damage). That's just potheads worshipping their idol.

Cost Alone Should Be a Reason To Be Concerned

Even if they weren't fellow human beings, and even if they weren't overrepresented in scary mass murder situations.

I've read that before deinstitutionalization, schizophrenics were the single largest category of hospital bed-days in North America. That's not mental hospital bed-days--all hospital bed-days. Why? Schizophrenics are about 1% of the U.S. population. But because most schizophrenics become ill in their teens to mid-20s, only about 30% recover, and it doesn't directly kill them--schizophrenics typically have 40-50 years during which they are sick.

I was digging around for more data to fill in one of my stubby little chapters, and I found this disturbing piece of data from a government agency called the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse about schizophrenia:

It accounts for more than 10% of all disabled people in the United States (U.S.) and 2.5% of all U.S. healthcare expenditures. The cost due to society of schizophrenia is enormous (more than $20 billion/year in the U.S. alone).

According to this table, the total monthly disability insurance payments for 2005 was $6,607,972,000--or $79,295,664,000 annually. Schizophrenia thus is costing us more than $8 billion a year just for disability checks. This page indicates that U.S. health care costs were slightly less than $2 trillion in 2005. So health care for schizophrenics (which isn't done all that well, since many are living on the streets) comes to about $50 billion.

Why is this not a major issue in the presidential campaign? I know that there's a lot of research funded to try and understand various mental illnesses. My first reaction to these numbers is that an investment of even $10 billion a year into understanding the causes and trying to find either preventative methods or cures would be a sensible investment.

I've mentioned previously that The Lancet, the most important British medical journal, a few years back reversed its editorial position about marijuana being harmless because they published a review of existing studies--and concluded that there was a 40% increase in psychosis among marijuana users--and the psychosis came after the marijuana use. This is merely a correlation--perhaps, for all we know, people who are going to become psychotic are attracted to marijuana, and it doesn't really have any effect.

Still, if that correlation does indicate causality, this suggests that Americans are paying at least $23 billion a year extra so that those potheads who don't go psychotic can get mellow and giggle stupidly.

A Job That Government Needs To Do

I was reluctant to say anything about this, but since my daughter is blogging about it, I'll link to what she has to say. As part of her MSW program, she has to intern in various facilities at what is called practicum:

I started my new practicum today with teens and it was definitely emotionally exhausting. Kids are ALWAYS hard to work with (in my opinion) compared to adults. They have some advantages: they often lack a long laundry list of financial and legal troubles, and there is hope that you can direct them to be healthy adults. But it is still hard seeing kids so young in so much pain. 14-year-olds should not be meth addicts. 15-year-olds should not be prostituted out to support parents' drug habits. 13-year-olds should not be pregnant. Kids are not KIDS anymore and seeing your ideal of what teenagers SHOULD be like shattered is depressing.

She's told me even more over dinner (which I won't go into detail about here), and it both enrages me and sorrows me what incredibly screwed up homes a lot of kids are coming from around here. And the bad news is: I think Idaho may be better off than a lot of other places in America.

I am very pleased with what I have seen of the meth commercials that Idaho is now running on television and radio. They are hard hitting, and from what I know of the destructive effects of it, accurate and not overblown. This is certainly a valuable activity, to the extent that it causes at least some people to pause for a second before deciding to start meth.

But there are some problems that simply can't be fixed by persuasion. They require the coercion of the state. Children should not be starting to use meth before they are old enough to understand what it is, just because the parents encourage them to do meth with them.

A Thought Experiment

I've received a rash of emails the last few days from people saying that Oakland's problem of violence is largely the result of drug prohibition, and we should repeal the drug laws. Well, there's no question that some categories of violence in inner cities are definitely connected to drug prohibition--especially turf wars.

But there's a problem with this explanation. Actually, several problems.

1. Murder rates among young black men are typically 10x or more worse than among young white men. Do young white men not buy or sell illegal drugs? If anything, whites have more disposable income than blacks, and thus more available to spend on drugs. A back of the envelope guess is that if drug prohibition causes 30% of the murders, and say 3 murders per 100,000 among young white men (who are definitely more dangerous than women or an age-normal distribution of the population), then why would young black men have 30 murders per 100,000 people caused by drug prohibition? Are blacks 10x as likely to be drug traffickers or drug addicts? That's a tall claim that requires some serious evidence. In short, drug prohibition might well be a factor, but it is insufficient to explain why the situation is so much worse among young black men.

2. Are drug laws not enforced as vigorously in white communities? One of the recurring complaints of black community activists for many years was the lack of effort by police to deal with widespread drug dealing, and their recurring efforts to reduce the number of liquor stores and liquor ads in the ghettos. (That's how you can tell you have entered a ghetto, by the way: every fourth or fifth billboard is now for alcohol.) I can remember driving through East Palo Alto on several occasions in the 1980s and seeing drug dealing taking place quite openly. Here I am, a white guy driving through in a reasonably new car, and for all they know, an undercover cop, and they don't even make an attempt at hiding what they are doing. If drug prohibition is the problem, then the relatively low violence rates in white America would only make sense if the drug laws weren't enforced in white America as vigorously as they are in black America--and the difference would have to be dramatic to explain the tenfold difference in violence.

3. Those who are so partial to the "Drug Prohibition causes violence" explanation consistently ignore the inhibition-reducing effects of intoxicants. There's a reason that alcohol, for example, and opiates, and cocaine, and meth, are all associated with increased levels of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and child sexual abuse--and it isn't because drug traffickers are going out and doing these things as part of turf wars. They are because people that are loaded do things that they otherwise would not. Perhaps the reason that East Palo Alto was such a pit of a place to live in the 1980s was not drug prohibition, but the inability of law enforcement to prevent the sale of intoxicants.

4. I do not dispute that drug prohibition has its own set of significant problems: corruption of the criminal justice system; overloaded jails and prisons; a failure to help addicts who want help because the system is so punitive. But there's a reason that the drug laws remain in place: large numbers of Americans know people for whom legal intoxicants (like alcohol) or illegal drugs have been the source of enormous heartbreak, and they are not willing to exchange one set of serious problems for another serious set of problems. We already have a serious set of problems associated with alcohol abuse, and it is legal, and relatively lightly regulated. The fear is that marijuana, meth, and opiates, if deregulated, would soon expand the social problem set.

5. If you want to argue that drug laws don't reduce drug abuse, you have some serious work to do. Anytime that you make a commodity illegal, you are making it less available, simply because it can't be advertised, and therefore pricing becomes uncompetitive. Rising prices for all but the most severely addictive drugs will reduce consumption. As I have mentioned before, cirrhosis of the liver rates fell roughly in half within a few years of the start of Prohibition. They came back up again (although not as quickly) with a few years of the end of Prohibition. Pretty clearly, alcohol consumption, and especially the regular, high consumption of alcohol associated with cirrhosis of the liver, fell because of Prohibition. Whether the other negative consequences of Prohibition (such as gangsters and corrupt politicians) was too high of a price to pay is a legitimate question. It is also a legitimate question whether Prohibition disproportionately discouraged those drinkers who weren't the social problem. I rather suspect that people that had the occasional beer before Prohibition, or some wine at home with dinner, weren't the ones hitting speakeasies--and they weren't the problem that Prohibition was trying to fix. But let's not pretend that prohibiting a commodity doesn't affect consumption rates.

6. Those of you who argue so vigorously for decriminalization of drugs need to be consistent about this. If we are going to decriminalize marijuana, why not meth, heroin, LSD? All your principled arguments for one apply to these other drugs. (On the other hand, if your argument is that marijuana isn't terribly damaging, that's not a principled argument for drug decriminalization--just an argument for what drugs should be unlawful.) If you want drugs legal for adults, why don't your same arguments apply to minors as well? Or would the drug traffickers not break laws to sell to 6th graders? If you believe that minors shouldn't be restricted, why not deregulate alcohol sales to minors as well?

My experience is that those arguing for decriminalization of all drugs fit into several categories:

1. Those in love with the idea for its elegance. I had a long chat with a guy at a party last weekend, part of the generation that grew up during Vietnam, who was making this argument. Another person, a bit younger than me, asked him, "If the reason for repealing the drug laws is that they don't stop people from getting and using drugs, why not repeal the laws against robbery as well?" And this guy responded, "Sure. Laws against robbery don't do anything either. Just shoot 'em." Love the consistency, but I am not interested in living in a society like that, and I don't think too many people do.

2. Those who don't appreciate the level of damage that both legal and illegal drugs do. The older you get, the more damage you see caused by it.

3. Those who want marijuana legal because they have a serious addiction problem, don't want to admit that, and look for ways to turn, "I like to smoke pot, and no one should get in my way" into "I have a principled basis for scrapping all drug laws."

4. People that recognize the damage that is currently being done by drug use, and have concluded that the damage caused by trafficking is worse. I waver back and forth about this. There is probably an argument for decriminalizing heroin on this cost-benefit basis, but not marijuana. Marijuana drug gangs aren't major parts of our violence problem, and potheads seldom commit armed robbery. At least those who acknowledge that there is a serious social problem with drug abuse aren't living in a fantasy world.

Reality Check For George Soros

George Soros funded the California initiative (among others) that legalized marijuana for medicinal use. I voted for that initiative, because I thought that it wasn't such a big change--relatively few people would be so sick that marijuana would be the best choice. What has been surprising is how many people are now so sick that they need marijuana (snicker, snicker).

One of the traditional libertarian arguments for repealing drug laws is that making something legal reduces the violence associated with trafficking. On the downside, there is a significant violence problem associated with reduced inhibitions caused by many drugs (including alcohol).

California has, for practical purposes, made marijuana legal--but this September 26, 2007 Associated Press story shows that the trafficking-related violence is still going on:

PITTSBURG, Calif. (AP) - Three men have been charged with murdering a senior editor for PC World magazine in what police said was an attempt to steal marijuana that the victim's son grew in their home for medical use.
Rex Farrance, 59, the San Francisco-based magazine's senior technical editor, was shot in the chest on Jan. 9 after masked men broke into his suburban home.
Farrance's relatives believe the killers targeted the home after learning about the marijuana from a friend of the 19-year-old son.
"Without regard to the legality of the extensive marijuana-growing operation that was taking place in the residence, we regard Mr. Farrance as an innocent victim in this case," said Contra Costa County prosecutor Harold Jewett.
Farrance's wife, Lenore Vantosh-Farrance, was pistol-whipped during the robbery but managed to call 911.

"Extensive"? Mr. Farrance's son must have been extremely sick.