These guys literally have gold-plated machine guns. Bought and paid for by American Marijuana Prohibition (and, perhaps, walked into Mexico while the ATF watched).

FOX News Latino is reporting news of a huge drug ring bust with the headline “Arizona Busts Billion Dollar Drug Ring Tied To Mexican Cartels“. Based on the report, over 99% of the drugs seized in what was called “Operation Pipeline Express” was marijuana.

The ring is believed be tied to the Sinaloa cartel — Mexico’s most powerful — and responsible for smuggling more than 3.3 million pounds of marijuana, 20,000 pounds of cocaine and 10,000 pounds of heroin into the U.S. through Arizona over the past five years, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Their efforts in that time generated an estimated $2 billion, according to ICE.

In the three busts combined, the agencies have arrested 76 suspected smugglers and seized more than 61,000 pounds of pot, about 160 pounds of heroin, about 210 pounds of cocaine, nearly $760,000 in cash, and 108 weapons, including assault rifles and shotguns. The other busts came in mid-September and mid-October.

Remember during Prop 19′s legalization campaign in California when everybody was arguing about just how much marijuana legalization would cripple the Mexican drug traffickers?  Arizona’s Attorney General was saying “The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 to 70 percent by the trade in one drug: marijuana.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoting the Drug Czar’s 2006 National Drug Control Strategy that said, “61 percent of that revenue, or $8.5 billion, is directly tied to marijuana export sales” (page 36).  Then the RAND Corporation was studying how much Prop 19 would hurt the Mexican drug traffickers and said, ”This 60% figure is a truly mythical number, one that appeared out of nowhere and that has acquired great authority.  This figure should not be taken seriously.”  The Drug Czar also scoffed at the notion that legalization would hurt eat into Mexican drug traffickers’ profits, saying the marijuana revenue data “was based on 1997 information… we strongly believe we see significantly less than the numbers cited from 14 years ago.”

So how does that jibe with the numbers from this “Operation Pipeline Express”?

By weight, then, over 99% of what was seized and what was estimated to have been trafficked overall was marijuana.  However, there is more profitability in cocaine and heroin than marijuana.  Let’s figure that out by throwing in the ONDCP’s own estimated street value of illegal drugs, as of 2007.  In that report, they place the price of a pound of marijuana between $250 – $6,000, a pound of cocaine at $6,500 – $10,000, and a pound of heroin at $24,000 – $56,000.  If we use the lowest figures for all three drugs, then we only get a total of about $1.2 billion – remember, they said this was a ring responsible for “an estimated $2 billion”.

So let’s give the prohibitionists the best possible scenario: cocaine and heroin that fetch the highest prices recorded in 2007 and the cheapest schwag Mexican brickweed priced at a level that will get us a $2 billion total ($375.76/lb… thanks Excel Goal Seek!)

It’s entirely possible that the Mexican drug trafficking organizations like the Sinaloa cartel make significant profits through other criminal activities not listed here.  It’s also tough to make perfectly accurate claims about an unregulated market.  Based on this “Operation Pipeline Express” data, however, it appears that our prohibition on American grown and sold marijuana is an enormous financial benefit worth at least half or more of the Mexican criminal gangs’ profits.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Gandhi (kinda)

Paul Armentano, NORML’s Deputy Director, and Paul Kuhn, from the NORML Board, co-wrote an op-ed for marijuana legalization in Tennessee’s largest newspaper.  Usually when NORML composes these things we might get a response from “Parents United for Safe Healthy Youth” (or some-such anti-legalization group) but the Drug Czar’s office ignores us.

Apparently we’re now in the “they fight you” stage, because a deputy director at the ONDCP, David Mineta, took the time to rebut our op-ed.  You can tell how desperate the prohibitionists are in the age of Google to maintain the fear-mongering over cannabis right out of the gate:

Proponents of marijuana legalization often argue it will do everything from fixing our economy to ending violent crime (“Marijuana legalization bill offers safer alternative,” Tennessee Voices, Aug. 15). Yet, the science is clear: Marijuana use is not a benign drug and it is harmful to public health and safety.

I agree: marijuana use is not a benign drug.  Marijuana may be fairly benign drug, marijuana use may be a relatively benign act, but I know my verbs from my nouns.  (Is this the level of writing accepted at Berkeley these days?)  The stilted construction of the second sentence is only bested by the two strawman arguments in the first.  Nobody says it will “fix” the economy or “end” violent crime, but that legalization will help in those goals.  Kinda like how the drug czar always tells us that drug abuse is something that never goes away but prohibition will help in those goals.

After the strawmen are introduced, we dive right into the Reefer Madness lies (I’ll count them for you):

Decades of scientific study, including research from the prestigious National Institutes of Health, show marijuana use is associated with addiction (1), treatment admissions among young people (2), fatal drugged driving accidents (3), and visits to emergency rooms (4). Data also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled in the past 20 years (5). This is especially troubling for use among teens because the earlier a person begins to use drugs, the more likely they are to develop a more serious abuse and addiction problem later in life (6).

(1) According to the prestigious National Institutes for Health, the dependency rate for first-time users of cannabis is about 9%.  For alcohol it is 15% and for tobacco it is 32%.  So, we’re making booze and cigs prohibited soon, right?

(2) Treatment admissions are fueled by an ever-rising number of drug courts, which sentence young people caught with cannabis to a rehab many of them don’t need or want.  A majority (57%) of admissions to rehab for cannabis are due to the criminal justice system; only 15% are self-admissions.  Over a third (37%) of cannabis rehab admissions hadn’t used any cannabis in the month prior to rehab.

(3) When you test the blood or urine of people who have been in fatal accidents and discover THC or its metabolites, what you’ve learned is that many people use cannabis.  Since metabolites stay in the urine for days or weeks and THC in the blood stays for hours or days, we aren’t learning a thing about cannabis’ culpability in accidents.  We don’t even know if the cannabis driver’s death was due to the other driver in a crash abusing meth or cocaine or heroin, since in many cases those metabolites are eliminated by the time the driver is tested.

(4) Ditto for emergency rooms – if you’re admitted for a broken leg from playing touch football and the pee test shows you smoked weed last weekend, that’s counted as a “marijuana-related emergency room admission.”

(5) Average potency of seized cannabis has varied over the years but has steadily increased.  The average now is about twice that of twenty years ago.  However, the inference that more potent marijuana equals greater addictive potential is another fallacy.  It would be like saying people who drink wine are more likely to become alcoholics than beer drinkers.  More potent pot means you get the same high with less pot, that’s all, or if you smoke more, you fall asleep.  It’s not like alcohol where a beer drunk is friendly and a tequila drunk is mean (generalizing).

(6) It’s true, the percentage of hard drug users who started with cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco is much greater than those who started with hard drugs.  That’s as meaningful as saying the percentage of people in the Hell’s Angels who rode a bicycle as kids is much greater than those who started on a Harley.  It doesn’t mean bicycles lead to biker gangs any more than cannabis leads to heroin.  The “gateway theory” has been disproved by that same prestigious National Institutes for Health report that Mineta cites above.

Would marijuana legalization make Tennessee healthier or safer? One needs to look no further than Tennessee’s current painful experience with prescription drug abuse. In Tennessee, prescription drugs are legal, regulated, and taxed — and yet rates of the abuse of pain relievers in the state exceed the national average by more than 10 percent.

So…. because Tennessee has a problem with people abusing toxic, addictive, legal prescription drugs, we need to make sure we lock ‘em in a cage if they use a non-toxic, non-addictive medicinal herb?  Is this an argument for making prescription drugs illegal?  The Drug Czar’s office is getting very desperate if the way they defend keeping marijuana in Schedule I is that they can’t control the Schedule II and III drugs.

Nationally, someone dies from an unintentional drug overdose — driven in large part by prescription drug abuse — on average every 19 minutes. What would America look like if we had just as many people using marijuana as we currently have smoking cigarettes, abusing alcohol, and abusing prescription drugs? The bottom line is that laws that control substances have had a real and lasting effect on keeping drug use rates relatively low. They keep prices higher which helps hold use rates relatively low. Moreover, other addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco, which are already legal and taxed, cost much more in social costs than the revenue they generate.

Considering that some people would substitute marijuana for alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs, I think America would look a whole lot better.  The bottom line is that Mineta equates all marijuana use with abuse, as he does tobacco use.  ”Using marijuana” and “smoking cigarettes” are equated with “abusing alcohol” and “abusing prescription drugs”, implying that alcohol and prescriptions have legitimate and acceptable uses.

Now consider Mineta’s point that prohibition keeps drug prices high.  It’s not true; in inflation-adjusted 1981 dollars, heroin is 81% cheaper, meth is 57% cheaper, cocaine is 80% cheaper, and crack is 60% cheaper.  Only cannabis is more expensive; it costs 86% more now than 1981.  So, prohibition has made the safest substance more expensive and it has acted as a price support for weed dealers and Mexican drug lords.  It hasn’t stopped anyone from accessing cannabis; 1-in-3 young adults toke annually, 1-in-8 toke weekly, and 80+% of teenagers say cannabis is easy to access.

Finally, alcohol and tobacco tax revenues don’t cover alcohol and tobacco’s social costs because… wait for it… alcohol and tobacco are toxic, addictive, and harmful to your organs.  If there are social costs from cannabis – a big “if” and a small amount – we are recovering zero in tax revenue to offset it and spending billions in a futile attempt to stop it.

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1. Montana man faces life in prison for sharing 3 grams of medical marijuana with friend in car
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• Groovin’ Thursday: Mystic Roots – “Sweet Sensimilla”

Radical Rant

• Washington registry / dispensary bill better than arrests and theories

Reefer Madness Debunked

• Gateway Gil buffaloes Buffalo

We’ve told you before how your taxpayer dollars have been wasted in anti-marijuana ad campaigns that failed to discourage teen marijuana use:

(USA Today) WASHINGTON — A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.

Lately, they’ve told us that they don’t really focus on producing anti-marijuana ads anymore:

(CBS News) Over the last several years, without many people realizing it, the U.S. government has changed the focus of its anti-drug efforts, deemphasizing marijuana in favor of prescription drugs.

A CBS News survey of government and nonprofit anti-drug groups has found a retreat from anti-marijuana campaigns over the past several years as prescription and over the counter drug abuse has grown amongst teens.

In fact, the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the nation’s largest creator of anti-drug messages, hasn’t produced a single anti-marijuana public service advertisement since 2005.

But the ONDCP has still been producing these ads, both on the radio and video:

Scene #6: (Scene changes. There is a guy sitting in the drivers seat in his car, parked in front of a garage.)

Boy #4: ”I ditched my friends and they had to find their own way home.”(He says in a very excited and happy voice; he smiles and nods approvingly as the scene fades away.)

Scene #6: (Scene fades away. Screenshots of all six smiley, self-confident, and proud teenagers flash by. The overall tone is clearly sarcastic.)

TEXT: “What has weed done for you?”

(AbovetheInfluence.com logo appears)

Now a study out of The Ohio State University is touting success of reducing by 50% the eighth graders who smoke pot who watched those “Above the Influence” commercials.  The media and the government have been hyping it in multiple outlets:

(NewsWise) A study of more than 3,000 students in 20 communities nationwide found that by the end of 8th grade, 12 percent of those who had not reported having seen the campaign took up marijuana use compared to only 8 percent among students who had reported familiarity with the campaign.

The researchers said they believe this is the first independent study to find evidence for the effectiveness of the “Above the Influence” campaign, which was initially funded at nearly $200 million a year when it began in 2005.

Not until the 28th out of 30 paragraphs do we get around to learning the scientific validity of this, um, “study”…

Slater says study limitations include the fact that findings regarding the ONDCP campaign were based on survey results and not a randomized, experimental design in which some youth saw the ONDCP campaign and others did not. Another limitation was that the study, while taking place in 20 communities around the U.S., did not use a random sample of U.S. youth.

So, basically, you asked a bunch of kids “Did you see those commercials?” and “Have you smoked pot?”.  That’s your science.  Could it be that maybe kids with nice families and good grades get more TV watching time and are naturally less likely to smoke pot because of economics?  Maybe pot smoking kids come from broken homes?  This is a sad excuse for science.

US Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) speaks at Kush Con in Denver 2010

From my new favorite congressman:

Balancing the budget should start by cutting programs that aren’t working.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, commonly referred to as the Drug Czar, needlessly costs taxpayers $1.5 billion dollars every ten years funding a failed war on drugs. It’s time we put an end to the waste and focused on paying down the debt and investing in America’s future. Add your name to the petition!

I call on President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise and “go through the federal budget line-by-line…and eliminate programs that don’t work,” by de-funding the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or the Drug Czar.

Domestic law enforcement: 35.5% of the budget in 2010, 36.5% in 2012. Because we're emphasizing treatment now, don't ya know?

All hat and no cattle, that boy just ain’t real
All boots and no saddle, don’t know how to make a cowgirl feel
Think I’m gonna tell him to pack up his act
And go back where he came from
‘Cause all hat and no cattle ain’t gonna get it done

- Trace Adkins, “All Hat No Cattle”

Remember just last month when President Obama was answering the legalization question from a member of LEAP?  Remember his answer?

Well, I think that this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate.  I am not in favor of legalization.  I am a strong believer that we need to think more about drugs as a public health problem. When you think about other damaging activities in our society [like] smoking, drunk driving, making sure you’re wearing seat belts, typically we’ve made huge strides over the last twenty to thirty years by changing people’s attitudes.  On drugs, we have been so focused on arrests and incarceration and interdiction that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how we can shrink demand. This is something that within the White House, we are looking at very carefully.

Moderator asks: Any Ideas?

Some of this requires shifting resources, being strategic as to where it makes sense for us to focus on where we need interdiction.  We have to go after drug cartels that are not only selling drugs but are creating havoc, for example, along the US – Mexican border.  But also, is there some way for us to shrink demand? In some cities, for example, it might take you six months to get into a drug treatment program.  Well, if you’re trying to kick a habit and somebody says come back in six months, that’s pretty discouraging.  So we’ve got to do more on figuring out how we get resources on that end of it and also look at what we are doing when we have non-violent, first-time drug offenders.  Are there ways that we can make sure that we are steering them into the straight-and-narrow without automatically resorting to incarceration and drug courts and mechanisms like that.  These are all issues that are worth exploring and worth a serious debate.

Well, the budget request for 2012 is in and the figures for incarceration and interdiction vs. drug treatment and prevention can be told.  In previous budgets, President Obama has maintained the focus on incarceration and interdiction that matched the same focus as his predecessors.

So how has President Obama shifted those resources to shrink demand?  How have we gotten resources on the drug treatment end of it without automatically resorting to incarceration?

Treatment dollars went up from 40.3% to 40.7% of the overall $25 billion drug control budget. That’s a shift of 0.4%.  I suppose it is a step in the right direction, but at this rate it will be 2036 before treatment is even given an equal focus as incarceration.

Gateway Gil - The Man With the Flaming Pants!

Paul Armentano does a phenomenal fashion review on the flaming pants Gil Kerlikowske, our drug czar, is wearing in the latest interview with The Daily Caller.  Gil dodges a question about the volumes of scientific reports on medical marijuana by claiming “there are over 100 groups doing marijuana research, there are several things in clinical trials right now,” when, in fact, there are exactly two clinic trials ongoing.

I want to focus on something else Gil said:

(The Daily Caller) KERLIKOWSKE: What has been made extremely clear is that the legalization community has made it patently clear that marijuana drug is a gateway for legalization. I think they’ve made that intention clear.

Besides the whole “extremely patently clear marijuana drug” syntax, think about what Gateway Gil is saying here.

The legalization community thinks medical marijuana is a gateway to legalization of marijuana.

Medical marijuana is legalization of marijuana, just for a tightly-defined demographic.  It’s a second-class, Jim Crow, quasi-legalization, but essentially, it is what those of us in the legalization community consider the bare minimum of legalization: don’t throw me in jail, leave me alone, let me grow and use and maybe even buy and sell cannabis.

Just how do we make this supposed gateway work?  We pass medical marijuana laws and suddenly 50%+1 voters in the state vote to legalize for everyone?  You got us, Gateway Gil, that’s kind of the plan. We know when cannabis isn’t completely forbidden, when people learn the truth about it, that it is safer than alcohol, that it is not carcinogenic like tobacco, that it isn’t chemically addictive like hard drugs, they begin to realize legalization is a reasonable alternative to breaking down people’s doors, shooting their dogs, and ruining their lives over a weed.

That’s the problem of medical marijuana for Gateway Gil: it provides living breathing visible examples of what legalization could be like.  It’s harder to demonize the reefers when you happen to know someone whose cannabis use calms the tremors of their multiple sclerosis enough for them to hold down a graphic design job.  It’s difficult to castigate the “black market drug dealers” when you can tour a professionally-run dispensary that pays sales taxes and tests product for impurities and cannabinoid levels.  Those police overtime weeding operations you call “drug seizures” sound a lot less frightening when people are regularly exposed to regular-looking people tending beautiful green gardens.

However, there is quite certainly a difference between medical users who need cannabis and social users who want cannabis.  Even if marijuana prohibition remains for social use, that in no way changes the need to fight for medical use or the fact that cannabis is a beneficial medicine.  Gateway Gil can’t accept that and believes medical marijuana is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors…

KERLIKOWSKE: I think it hides the debate. If you call it medicine, if you call the people using it patients and the people distributing it caregivers, it completely masks the debate. I think that sends a bad message to young people, and I’ve heard that from high-school students we’ve done focus groups with.

Gil thinks this woman, Donna Lambert, and hundreds of thousands of others are faking it to get high.

No, it completely illuminates the debate, considering there are volumes of study on the issue that have settled beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is medical utility in cannabis.  Even the American Medical Association admits “smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.”

If high school students are reporting they believe that cannabis is medicine and smoking marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, it is because that’s a fact.  When is telling our children the truth ever a “bad message”?

KERLIKOWSKE: I think it came back to hurt them in the legalization push in California, where dispensaries are more ubiquitous than Starbucks. They’re on every corner. They’re outside waving signs. I think people got pretty tired of having it jammed down their throats. And it isn’t a constitutional right, the last time I checked.

Well, you’ve just confirmed why you needn’t fear medical marijuana, then, haven’t you?  California’s got the most liberal medical marijuana law and you’re saying the ubiquity of it all turned off voters who then rejected legalization.  So how can you be afraid that we’re using medical marijuana as a gateway to legalization when it’s been proven to not work?  You should be secretly championing us so the public will see for themselves how awful medical marijuana is!

Terence McKenna said, “If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.”  As for the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  I looked all through that constitution and could not find any power delegated to the United States to monitor and control what The People ingest.  In fact, when it comes to The People, the Fourth Amendment says we have the right “to be secure in their persons… against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The only reason the right to plant seeds, harvest crops, and ingest herbs wasn’t placed in the Constitution is that even the best educated hemp farmers couldn’t envision a time when it would be necessary to enumerate that right.

Under Kerlikowske's reasoning, we never should have repealed Alcohol Prohibition, since alcohol made up less than 50% of Al Capone's overall profits.

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake has posted video of the Just Say Now! campaign delivering a legalization petition to Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske.  Since the drug czar is required by law to oppose all legalization efforts, it is a bit like petitioning the Pope to bless an orgy, but it does make for some entertaining video:

(FireDogLake) This morning I joined with members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and delivered 52,000 petition signatures to drug czar Gil Kerlikowske on behalf of the Just Say Now campaign.

Daniel Pacheco, a Georgetown University student from Colombia and a member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, handed the petition to  Kerlikowske at a press conference held by his office at the National Press Club.  The petition asks President Obama to end the war on drugs and legalize marijuana.

Daniel asked Kerlikowske why he opposed legalizing marijuana, since President Calderon of Mexico has said it could be helpful in fighting the Mexican drug cartels. Kerlikowske said that since marijuana comprised such a small percentage of drug cartel profits, legalizing marijuana would not have any impact on their activity.

“I don’t think that if they lose a small part of their revenue from legalizing marijuana that they’re going to go to work for Coca Cola or Microsoft,” he chuckled.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ha ha ha!  Oh, that jokester!  So, the idea here is that since legalizing marijuana won’t put them out of business, we should continue to subsidize part of their business?  Because our prohibition of marijuana leads to the high price Americans pay for weed they could grow themselves, subsidizing the high profits the Mexicans make on marijuana, and then our tax dollars subsidize the Merida Initiative that buys more helicopters, drones, surveillance, ammunition, and police to fight the traffickers!  We also help arm both sides of the drug war, with official grants of weapons to the “good guys” and plenty of gun shops just over the border whose guns end up in the hands of the “bad guys”.

So, since the Mexican criminals are unlikely to go to work for Coca Cola or Microsoft if we take away their puny marijuana profits, we should continue to make criminals out of Americans who smoke a joint, Mr. Kerlikowske?

Ryan Grim at Huffington Post digs deeper into Kerlikowske’s new song and dance about the “small part” of Mexican drug trafficking organizations’ profits from marijuana:

(Huffington Post) Instead of defending the principle of prohibition, Kerlikowske quibbled with Pacheco’s statistic on how much of the cartel’s revenue comes from marijuana. “The number that has been often cited in the press — 58 to 60 percent of cartel revenues comes — was introduced by ONDCP in 2006. Unfortunately, the history is that it was based on 1997 information,” Kerlikowske said. “Everyone that recognizes these cartels clearly understands that their revenues have changed a lot since 1997. There are different drugs, they are involved with different criminal enterprises, so people that continue — and we really reject trying to continue to use a number that is now 13 to 14 years old, about how much money comes from marijuana. So, we strongly believe we see significantly less than the numbers cited from 14 years ago.”

Testimony to the Senate from both the FBI and DEA, however, confirmed the 60-percent figure in 2010.

How low a percentage of overall profits must marijuana reap before it’s no longer worth taking that business from the criminals?  30%?  15%?  5%?  Suppose we were talking about crippling Al Qaeda.  Do you suppose if we discovered an easy way to reduce the funding of terrorists by even five percent that our government officials would be dismissing the idea, simply because those terrorists wouldn’t then be forced to work at Starbucks?

Nobody thinks legalizing marijuana in America is suddenly going to turn murderous torturing drug trafficking criminals into Boy Scouts.  Surely most criminals are going to be criminals and will find new criminal enterprises if we legalize marijuana… but some won’t.  Some may become the new Joe Kennedys who turn their prohibited business into a lucrative legal business.  The question is whether we want to continue to give criminals a lucrative illegal business when there is no compelling reason to do so.

The worst circle you could pass a joint to in America. (America's Drug Czars, from HW Bush to Obama, clockwise from left in chronological order - Bennett, Martinez, Brown, McCaffrey, Walters, Kerlikowske - with their ideological progenitor, Harry J. Anslinger, Federal Bureau of Narcotics head from FDR to JFK.)

The LA Times printed an op-ed written by the former and current drug czars of Presidents (pot smoker) Barack Obama, (pot smoker) George W. Bush, (pot smoker) Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush. In the case of the current drug czar, Kerlikowske, this is no surprise, because it would be illegal of him not to oppose marijuana legalization:

(Drug WarRant) According to Title VII Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998: H11225:

Responsibilities. –The Director– [...]

(12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that–

1. is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and
2. has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;

Read that again.  Not only must Gil Kerlikowske take actions to oppose legalization, but he also has to ensure that federal money doesn’t go to scientists attempting to prove medical efficacy of cannabis.  Once marijuana was declared to be “bad”, the government is required to spend your tax money to tell you it is “bad”, spend your tax money to rebut the people who say it is “good”, and stifle any research using your tax money that would prove it is “good”.

It costs sixteen times more to keep pot illegal than the social cost of pot smoking. Drinkers cost society eight times more and smokers forty times more than tokers do.

Paul Armentano has already done a fantastic job slamming their thesis, which presents the following premises:

• “the Dutch have dramatically reduced what at one time were thousands of shops to only a few hundred” – OK, but did they decide they should shut them all down and criminalize anyone caught with even a joint?  No, they maintain a system where adults can possess and use personal amounts of cannabis… because it works.
• “legalizing marijuana would lead to more accidents and fatalities involving drivers under its influence” – even though all available studies show marijuana-using drivers to drive more slowly and take less risks.  Meanwhile, drunk drivers caused 11,773 deaths in 2008, yet nobody (but me) ever suggests mandatory breathalyzer valet parking at taverns or prohibiting alcohol altogether.
• Legalization wouldn’t raise tax money because marijuana “is easy and cheap to cultivate… Why would people volunteer to pay high taxes on marijuana if it were legalized?” – you mean like the tomatoes and carrots I pay tax on at the grocery store?  Or the beer I pay tax on that I could easily brew at home?  Drug czars always think it is easy to cultivate marijuana; I’d like to see them deal with a spider mite outbreak.  I’d much rather buy weed at $100 an ounce than deal with spider mites… and so would the majority of tokers.
• “For every dollar society collects in taxes on alcohol, for example, we end up spending eight more in social costs.” - so, then, you’re arguing to repeal the 21st Amendment, I guess?  It is no surprise alcohol and tobacco cost society more than they reap in taxes, because alcohol and tobacco are toxic and addictive; marijuana is not.
• “Law enforcement officers do not currently focus much effort on arresting adults whose only crime is possessing small amounts of marijuana” - so, then, if you guys really put your hearts into it, you’d arrest more than 850,000 adults each year, 89% of them for mere possession of marijuana?

We don't really spend much time busting people who smoke pot... except for the 20 million we've arrested since 1970...

So let’s meet the authors – what else do they have to say about marijuana?

Gil Kerlikowske (Obama) – Was Seattle police chief, a city where his officers had been directed by voter initiative to treat marijuana as “lowest enforcement priority”, leading to an 80% decrease in marijuana arrests with no attendant increase in pot smoking.  He also served while Seattle Hempfest was gathering 200,000 people in a park every year, telling his officers to ignore the open pot smoking, with no serious public safety incidents.  The Seattle Times noted in 2003, “Kerlikowske said the number of cases his department handles has declined, down from 600 cases in 1998 to 418 cases in 2001.” If it is so innocuous you feel no need to arrest people for doing it, why should it remain a crime?

John P. Walters (W Bush) – Famous for saying “The fact is today, people don’t go to jail for the possession of marijuana. Finding somebody in jail or prison for possession of marijuana is like finding a unicorn. It doesn’t exist.” During his tenure, 6.2 million marijuana users were arrested nationwide… most of whom at least saw a holding cell as they were booked and some of whom spent significant time in a jail.  A few, an estimated 40,000 to 50,000, are still serving time.

States currently allowing, or considering to allow, Cheech & Chong to practice medicine.

Barry McCaffrey (Clinton) – McCaffrey, a former general, was infamous for calling medical marijuana “Cheech & Chong medicine”, despite the now 14 states that recognize it and groups like the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians (you know, doctors, not generals).  Though he did say last year he was “100 percent for” medical marijuana, kinda, and that he’s cool with my outdoor grow (“If you’re 40 years old, and you’re living in Oregon, and you have 12 giant pot plants in the back of your log cabin, knock yourself out.”)

Lee P. Brown (Clinton) – Rebutting the “myths” of legalization, Brown wrote in 1994: “In fact, effective enforcement serves to reduce drug supply, drive up prices, reduce the number of users and decrease the effects of chronic hard-core use.” In 1994, there were 4.83% of the American public using marijuana monthly.  Today, that percentage is 6.09%.  Around the beginning of Brown’s term, DEA estimated nationally about 3,000 metric tons of domestic marijuana production.  In 2006, California alone produced about 3,900 metric tons.  How’s that effective enforcement working out for ya?  (But he was right about that price.  I was buying eighths of an ounce of weed for $25 back in the Nineties – some folks are spending $75 an eighth now.)

"Me So Horny" - nearly as dangerous smoking a joint!

Bob Martinez (HW Bush) – After Martinez’ stint as Florida governor, where he tried to outlaw abortion, tried to execute 90 death row prisoners before their appeals had cleared, and succeeded in arresting rap group 2 Live Crew and arresting record store owners who sold their albums, Martinez became drug czar.  In 1999 he called on Florida mayors to oppose medical marijuana, saying “You can’t allow a foot to get through the door, because the whole body will go through eventually.” The theory here must be that you can’t let the foot of a dying puking elderly Floridian on chemotherapy through the door to smoke a joint so she can eat a meal, because it might lead to the body of some teenager smoking a joint at a 2 Live Crew concert (which he was going to do anyway, whether granny got her medical marijuana or not).

Bill Bennett (Clinton) – This is the guy who thinks you shouldn’t have the right to use medical marijuana in a state where it is legal, but had no problem gambling away $8 million in states where gambling is legal.  That $8 million came from proceeds of books like The Book of Virtues and The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family. He defends his gambling addiction by claiming he’s a responsible adult who spent his own discretionary funds to engage in an enjoyable habit serviced by a profit-making business that caused him, his family, and society no harm.  Meanwhile, in 1989 on Larry King Live, he was agreeing with a caller who said we should “behead the damn drug dealers,” replying “I mean what the caller suggests is morally plausible. Legally, it’s difficult. But somebody selling drugs to a kid? Morally, I don’t have any problem with that at all.”

In case you're wondering, white folks are statistically more likely to be marijuana users than blacks and Hispanics.

I guess our drug czars have improved their lying about, er, I mean “actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize” marijuana since the days of the first federal anti-drug preacher, Federal Bureau of Narcotics head Harry J. Anslinger (FD Roosevelt – Kennedy).  None of the recent drug czars says things like:

“Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….”

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

“Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis.”

“Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy”

Today the ideological heirs of Harry J. Anslinger continue to support the prohibition that makes murderers out of Mexican drug trafficking organizations that have killed 28,000 in three years. The Six Drug Czars support the prohibition that locks up “Negroes” and Hispanics at rates far greater than their use of drugs compared with whites. Bennett, Martinez, Brown, McCaffrey, Walters, and McCaffrey have been peddling the same lies and half-truths for over two decades to support a war over four decades based on a prohibition for seven decades that is, as President (pot smoker) Obama once declared “an utter failure, and I think we need to re-think and decriminalize our marijuana laws.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you smoked a joint last week, in eleven states you're as bad as a drunk driver.

From the Obama Administration’s recently released National Drug Control Strategy (hat tip to NORML reader Glen):

Encourage States To Adopt Per Se Drug Impairment Laws [ONDCP]
State laws regarding impaired driving are varied, but most State codes do not contain a separate offense for driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). Therefore, few drivers are identified, prosecuted, or convicted for DUID. Law enforcement personnel usually cite individuals with the easier to prove driving while intoxicated (DWI) alcohol charges. Unclear laws provide vague signals both to drivers and to law enforcement, thereby minimizing the possible preventive benefit of DUID statutes. Fifteen states have passed laws clarifying that the presence of any illegal drug in a driver’s body is per se evidence of impaired driving. ONDCP will work to expand the use of this standard to other states and explore other ways to increase the enforcement of existing DUID laws.

Here are the states President Obama would like to emulate:

1. Arizona: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.
2. Delaware: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites.
3. Georgia: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 12 months upon conviction.
4. Illinois: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 12 months upon conviction.
5. Indiana: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 60 days upon conviction.
6. Michigan: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 93 days upon conviction, vehicle immobilization for up to 180 days.
7. Nevada: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites.
8. Ohio: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 72 hours in jail, up to 6 months upon conviction, 6 month to 3 year license suspension.
9. Pennsylvania: DUID for cannabis metabolites, amount unclear.
10. South Dakota: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites for persons under the age of 21.
11. Utah: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 48 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.

Nine of the fifteen states cited have “zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites”.  What this means is that if the inactive (read: non-impairing) THC metabolite (THC-COOH) is detected in the urine of a driver, that driver is impaired in the eyes of the law.  (There are actually 17 states that have per se DUID laws, but Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin exclude metabolites of cannabis.)  Nevada and Ohio have 15 ng/ml levels which are very low; most workplace pre-employment screenings set the initial screening limit at 50 ng/ml.  At the confirmation level of 15 ng/ml, the frequent cannabis user will be positive for perhaps as long as 15 weeks.

Of course, faithful NORML readers and most of the public know that cannabis metabolites can remain detectable in the urine for up to 100 days or longer for a regular cannabis consumer and up to fifteen days for the casual consumer, even after quitting cold turkey.  Metabolites in urine don’t tell you a driver is actually impaired, they tell you someone used cannabis, but not when.  Even the US Department of Transportation admits that a positive test for drug metabolites is “solid proof of drug use within the last few days, it cannot be used by itself to prove behavioral impairment during a focal event.”

Cannabis metabolites are funny things; they don’t eliminate from the body in any predictable fashion. In fact, when you think about it, a metabolite is produced when the body metabolizes, or breaks down, a substance.  The presence of metabolites for THC tells you the body has already broken down the THC!  You could actually call a urine screening for metabolites a non-impairment test!

Now some of these laws do have per se standards for actual THC in the blood and you could argue that is a more realistic determinant of current impairment, but do you think most cash-strapped city, county, and state police are going to use an expensive, invasive blood test when a cheap urine screen is available and more likely to get them a conviction for DUID?

These per se DUID “zero tolerance” laws are nothing but discrimination against cannabis users, plain and simple.  Metabolites for every other drug, legal and illegal, are eliminated from the body much quicker:

• PCP (“angel dust”) = up to 2 days detection.
• Cocaine (and “crack”) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Opiates (heroin, oxycontin, etc.) = up to 1-2 days detection.
• Amphetamines (meth, speed) = up to 1-3 days detection.
• Barbiturates (Seconol, etc.) = up to 3 days detection.
• Benzodiazepenes (Xanax, Valium, Clonopin, etc.) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Alcohol (Budweiser, Jim Beam, Reisling, etc.) = you can actually be considered unimpaired with current blood alcohol levels up to 0.08%, so long as you pass the roadside sobriety test!
• Cannabis (marijuana, hash, pot) = up to 7-100 days detection.

So you could smoke some dust, snort some coke, shoot some smack, and pop some pills at the party Friday night, and possibly be considered an unimpaired driver by Monday (you could even have a couple of drinks before you got pulled over), but if you smoked a joint last month, in eleven states you could be going to jail and losing your license for endangering the public on the roadways.

These “zero tolerance” laws are criminalizing an entire population – cannabis users – for molecules in their bodies that have nothing to do with impairment or driving ability.  Can you imagine the uproar if police harassed drivers based on the melanin content of their skin… whoops, never mind.