Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

After pointing out the evidence of the Drug War’s failure to achieve “A drug free world by 2008″ as the UN’s general assembly crowed in 1998, The Economist points out:

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

The Economist then explains how legalization won’t be a tough sell at all in the producer countries, but it is faced with major political hurdles in the consumer countries:

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

Here at NORML we promote the legalization of cannabis.  Other drugs should require other measures that take into account the addictiveness and socially destructive capabilities of those drugs.  I personally don’t believe those measures should include locking up addicts — prison is a lousy rehab — but I also don’t think a regulatory scheme that treats marijuana similar to alcohol would be appropriate for, say, cocaine, meth, or heroin.

But when you say the word “Legalization”, immediately people conjure visions of “Maui Wowie”, “Colombia Flake”, “Crystal Energy”, and “Super Smack” sold on convenience store shelves next to the 24-oz beers and junk food snack cakes.  “Legalization”, though, can mean marijuana in adults-only stores with IDs checked for age 21 and limits placed on amount purchased while it can also mean much more stringent restrictions on other drugs like prescriptions and pharmacies and tight controls.

News of the World in the UK is reporting that Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps is one of us!

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and shots of spirits. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says our source.

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

So, you wanna explain to me how marijuana smoking will make one a lethargic, unmotivated loser who will never get anywhere in life?  This should be fun, watching sponsors and Olympic and USA Swimming officials trip all over themselves.  I expect to see a special exemption or a sudden new rule that lets firt time offenders skate with some sort of class and community service.  Does anybody really think they are going to end Michael Phelps’ career, the greatest Olympian ever, and a huge marketing and endorsement cash cow, for a picture of him doing something that isn’t even criminal in thirteen states?

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Marijuana law reform is a civil rights struggle.  I will not attempt to equate this struggle to those of minorities, women, or gays and lesbians; however, there are some parallels among our fight and theirs and, indeed, some threads of drug law injustice are woven directly into the struggles of these groups.  The prohibition of drugs was one of the tools of oppression – the “Negroes” for their cocaine, the “Chinamen” for their opium, and the Mexicans for their marihuana.  It remains so today – while people use drugs at about the same rate regardless of race, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and serve longer sentences for drug use than white people.

Aside from the racist nature of the origins and applications, cannabis prohibition itself is an unjust law.  First consider that it isn’t merely against the law to possess, cultivate, traffic, buy, and consume marijuana – it is against the law to be marijuana.  Federal and state law enforcement spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours flying helicopters attempting to spot cannabis growing out in the wild.  Ninety-eight percent of what is seized is known as “feral hemp”, which is wild ditchweed with unsmokably-low levels of THC.  Officials rip up and destroy every plant they see whether it is owned or tended by any human, whether or not it could possibly intoxicate any human.   Logically, then, the ultimate goal of marijuana prohibition is not to simply stop humans from using it for intoxication, but to eradicate the species cannabis sativa L. from the earth!

Think of that: our official policy is the extinction of a species of life.  Certainly that’s not entirely new.  We’re dedicated to the extinction of all manner of microscopic life, after all, but that is a justifiable policy for self-preservation – we kill bugs that kill us.  I cannot think of another plant or animal we treat like cannabis.  Deadly plants like nightshade and belladonna are legal, annoying plants like poison ivy and poison oak are legal, even intoxicating plants like coca and poppy are legal when cultivated for prescription medications.  But the cannabis plant, the plant that cannot kill you is completely illegal*.  The plant that can provide the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine humans need to survive is illegal.  Nature itself is illegal.  How much more contrary to eternal law and natural law could this unjust prohibition law be?

The fight against cannabis prohibition, against this unjust law, is a civil rights fight.  This declaration will offend some people who will point to four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, and to beatings and firehoses and condemn my declaration as making light of the plight of those who were truly oppressed.  I do not make light of those struggles, but I also recognize that civil rights are not a zero sum game and the degree and manner in which one is being oppressed are not what make the fight against oppression a just one.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when children would be judged by not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; I dream of a day when workers are judged not by the metabolites in their urine but the quality of their work.

Later in King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. …

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …

The unjust law of marijuana prohibition is difference made legal.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our intoxicant, but does not bind itself to forgo their intoxicant.  The majority compels our minority forgo our medicine, but does not bind itself to forgo their medicine.  The majority compels our minority to forgo their religious sacrament, but does not bind itself to forgo their religious sacrament.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our source of food, fuel, and fiber, but does not bind itself to forgo their sources.

The majority may argue that they do not prohibit intoxication, medication, religious sacrament, or food, fuel, and fiber cultivation, so long as it doesn’t involve marijuana.  This to me sounds like the argument against same-sex marriage rights, that gays and lesbians are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as everybody else.  If we are given a right, but then proscribed from exercising that right in the manner that benefits us without a valid reason from the majority, it is not really a right.  When intoxication, medication, and sacrament are legal rights, but we are proscribed from using a demonstrably safer intoxicant, medicine, and sacrament, that is difference made legal.

No, we do not face the firehoses and the dogs and the lynchings, nor do we suffer in as great of numbers as did the African Americans Dr. King so graciously led in the years before my birth.  Our oppression is more subtle and codified into laws that restrict our housing, employment, and educational opportunities.  We do not tremble in fear of the midnight ride of white-robed vigilante Klansmen; our terror comes in the form of midnight no-knock raids of body-armored SWAT teams.

Like the civil rights struggles of the past, we work to change laws that oppress people, laws that enjoy support from the majority and are rationalized by tradition, religion, and junk science.  Unlike the civil rights struggles of the past, our constituency is an invisible group defined by lifestyle, not genetics.  That choice to use cannabis should not disqualify our fight to be treated as equals under the law.  After all, the choice to worship the God of your understanding is not genetic, it is a lifestyle choice as well, and our law recognizes that one cannot be discriminated against for that choice.  In fact, it is a bit ironic that one’s choice of God, a belief that cannot be proven by science to beneficial, is a protected right, yet one’s choice of cannabis, a plant that can be proven by science to be beneficial, is a federal crime.

The freedom to worship, of course, is an explicit right recognized by our First Amendment, but its foundation is in the inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, among them being Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.  If that last one – the Pursuit of Happiness – doesn’t give me the right to smoke a joint so long as I don’t affect anyone else’s Life and Liberty, then the Constitution isn’t worth the hemp paper on which it was drafted.

Also from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Today’s freedom fighters are the people like Eddy Lepp and Charles Lynch, providing aid and comfort to the sick and dying by growing and supplying them with medicine, only to face the rest of their natural lives behind bars because what they did was “illegal”.

Today’s “whites-only” establishments are the “drug-free” workplaces keep cannabis users confined to low-paying part-time or temp service jobs, while the rest of the workers are allowed all the alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medications they desire.

Today’s lynchings are the Rachel Hoffmans and Jonathan Magbies who are murdered by police negligence, solely over their use of cannabis.  Today’s institutionalized discrimination is the over 20 million in my lifetime whose lives are marked with the scarlet letter of a drug conviction, affecting their child custody, government assistance, college financial aid, employment opportunities, professional licenses, voting rights, and liberty.

The prohibition of cannabis ultimately degrades human personality and is against moral law.  It is an unjust law that cannot stand, and we have a moral responsibility to disobey it.  In doing so, we express the highest respect for the law.  On this day when we recognize the greatness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and on tomorrow, when we see part of that dream fulfilled, remember that we don’t fight to “make pot legal so you can get high”; we fight because the Pursuit of Happiness is our right and caging us for our method of pursuit is unjust.

Smoking pot is our civil right!

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

* I recognize that marijuana is legally grown at ElSohly’s lab at the University of Mississippi.  But consider that marijuana’s two purposes – to supply five people grandfathered in to the IND program and to provide marijuana for studies to prove how awful marijuana is to justify its prohibition.  In this metaphor it would be akin to saving a few vials of polio virus so you could use them to make vaccines.

Just south of the Portland, Oregon, metro area is a town called Molalla. Like most rural areas in Oregon, it is politically much more intolerant of cannabis than the liberal confines of Multnomah County.

An Oregon NORML member snapped this pic while driving on US Hwy 99E.  In case it’s unreadable (click pic for larger version) the message on this billboard from the Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime says:

MARIJUANA- A Gateway Drug to METH

This message is accompanied by a picture of a man smoking a joint on the left, and the now infamous Oregonian picture of the pock-marked female meth addict.  Then the message continues by asking people to call the county sheriff’s office anonymous tip line.

We’re not against community organizations who in good faith try to relieve their neighborhoods of crime.  It’s just sad that they’re trying to reduce the harm from hard drugs by lying about cannabis.  Marijuana is not a gateway to meth or any other drug, any moreso than coffee, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.  The gateway theory has been debunked by many independent organizations and even by our own drug-hating government:

University of Pittsburgh 2006:

Researchers found that adolescents who used marijuana prior to using other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, were no more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder than other subjects in the study.

RAND Corp Study 2002: 

“While the gateway theory has enjoyed popular acceptance, scientists have always had their doubts,” said lead researcher Andrew Morral, associate director of RAND’s Public Safety and Justice unit.  “Our study shows that these doubts are justified.”

Institute of Medicine 1999: 

“There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.  

“Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana — usually before they are of legal age.”

In fact, the American Medical Association claims that if there is such a “gateway” effect, it’s alcohol and tobacco that are the “gateway”.  From the Journal of the American Medical Association:

“…early regular use of tobacco and alcohol emerged as the 2 factors most consistently associated with later illicit drug use and abuse/dependence.”

I could keep link-farming all of the studies from Canada, Australia, Europe, and the World Health Organization that declare the marijuana gateway theory to be bullshit, but you can easily find that for yourself at DrugWarFacts.org.

My biggest problem with the billboard isn’t the lie.  It’s that you and I paid for it.

That’s right, that billboard on the outskirts of my hometown, like many probably displayed around your hometown, are funded by grants from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  In 1997 the Drug Free Communities Act was signed by President Clinton.  Grants are given to local community anti-drug organizations, like the “Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime”.  Last year, ONDCP gave out $74 million in grants to 736 of these orgs around the country.

I called the contact name for the Molalla grant (5 SP011449-04) to try to find out how much the billboard cost and the amount of the federal grant, but she wasn’t very interested in speaking to me once I told her I was a journalist doing a story on government anti-drug grants.  I hadn’t even gotten to the point of telling her I was from NORML before she was hanging up.  But if we just take a simple average, it’s about $100,000 per organization.

I also looked up one of the leading (read: expensive) rehab centers in Oregon, Serenity Lane, and found out that a 28-day intensive inpatient drug rehab service costs $11,900.  So, then, with that average grant of $100,000, the average “drug-free” community could pay for eight meth addicts to get drug rehab.  The entire $74 million would treat 6,218 meth addicts, or just over 1% of the entire monthly meth-using population of the US (about 529,000 meth addicts).

Or they could blow it all on a marijuana gateway drug lie on a billboard.  (Hey, if marijuana use is such a “gateway”, how come there are 14 million monthly stoners but only half a million monthly tweekers?  Looks like only 1 out of 28 stoners found their way through the gate!)

Drug use cost NZ society $1.3 bn, index shows – 24 Jun 2008 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news
The Drug Harm Index, released yesterday, will help police determine the socio-economic costs from drug seizures and track the value of the drug trade in New Zealand.

It found that 373,310 people used cannabis, but only 17 per cent of these were frequent users.

There were 38,390 cocaine users, of which 88 per cent were frequent users.

Nearly 23,000 people used crystal methamphetamine (36 per cent of them often) and 81,890 took Ecstasy (24 per cent often).

So 83% of New Zealanders who use cannabis use it infrequently and responsibly, and the 63,462 who use cannabis often are almost as numerous as those who use coke, meth, and X (61,717).  Plus, we can’t say how many of the frequent users use more than one drug.

Male cannabis users took about 8 per cent more sick days than the average male worker and opioid users took 40 per cent more days.

I’m curious about how many more sick days were taken by alcohol users?  No matter – I can’t speak for New Zealand, but in America, the average number of paid sick leave days for first year employees is eight.  So if cannabis smokers took 8% more, that works out to an extra five hours off for sick leave.

But I also doubt the reality of those numbers.  How do male cannabis users track across the various fields of endeavor?  For example, you’re going to find more cannabis smokers working in a restaurant than in a boardroom.  Drug testing restricts the fields where cannabis smokers can work.  Are there more overall sick days taken in those fields than others?

While stimulants contributed 41 per cent of the total costs, figures showed that in 2006, police and Customs seized 33,480kg of cannabis compared with only 155kg of stimulants.

And police dealing with drug offences spent 55.8 per cent of their time addressing cannabis, against 43 per cent of their hours dealing with stimulant-related issues.

Sounds like a lot of time and effort spent by the New Zealand authorities to fight cannabis, a relatively-safe, socially-benign drug that 83% of users are using infrequently, to the detriment of fighting meth, a very dangerous, socially-devastating drug that 36% of users are abusing.  Kinda like here, huh?