Posted March 5, 2008
Analysis by Richard Cowan
For years, I have been crankily arguing that cannabis prohibition is not just a failure but a counterproductive fraud, making the problems of “substance abuse” much worse.
Here is more proof.
In his cover letter for the 2008 National Drug Control Strategy President Bush says, “I committed our Nation to an ambitious goal: In 2002, we began efforts to cut drug use among young people by 25 percent over five years…
Since 2001, the rate of youth drug abuse has dropped by 24 percent. Young people’s use of marijuana is down by 25 percent. Their use of Ecstasy has dropped by more than 50 percent. And their use of methamphetamine has declined by 64 percent.
Overall, an estimated 860,000 fewer young people in America are using drugs today than when we began these efforts….”
Even if one takes that number at face value, and no one should, it should be remembered that there were over 800,000 arrests for marijuana alone, just last year.
In other words, we have arrested millions of Americans, and caused untold havoc in Mexico and in many other countries in order to reduce use of some illicit drugs, mostly marijuana, by a fraction of the number of people subjected to Drug War violence.
Now, having conflated “legal” with “safe” and “illegal” with “dangerous”, he has to acknowledge that “Unfortunately, many young Americans do not understand how dangerous abusing medication can be. And in recent years, the number of Americans who have died from prescription drug overdoses has increased.”
That is as close to honesty as US “drugs policy” ever gets, and it is a huge understatement of the problem. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control February 9, 2007 Unintentional Poisoning Deaths — United States, 1999—2004 :
“In 2004, poisoning was second only to motor-vehicle crashes as a cause of death from unintentional injury in the United States (1). Nearly all poisoning deaths in the United States are attributed to drugs, and most drug poisonings result from the abuse of prescription and illegal drugs (2). Previous reports have indicated a substantial increase in unintentional poisoning mortality during the 1980s and 1990s…. (P)oisoning mortality rates in the United States increased each year from 1999 to 2004, rising 62.5% during the 5-year period. The largest increases were… persons aged 15–24 years (113.3%)….
The number of unintentional poisoning deaths increased from 12,186 in 1999 to 20,950 in 2004. The annual age-adjusted rate increased 62.5%, from 4.4 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 7.1 in 2004.”
Of course, none of those deaths were caused by cannabis. In other words, the Bush Administration has concentrated on reducing the use of a substance that has no lethal dose, while overdose deaths soared over 100% among the group from 15 to 25 that it was supposedly trying to protect.
These problems with the misuse of prescription drugs are acknowledged only as an excuse to increase the power of the government to use state violence in an attempt to reduce the problem they have created. T’was a great victory, again.
Oh, yes, and now for the source of the headline. It was the latest report from the International Narcotic Control Board, paragraph #372, page 61: “However, the decrease in the abuse of cannabis among youth in the United States may be offset by an increase in the abuse of prescription drugs. The Board, therefore, encourages the authorities of the United States to vigorously address the problem of the illegal sale and abuse of prescription drugs.”
(With the INCB, any use of an illegal drug is “abuse,” even one little toke.)
It is revealing the lengths to which the Czar goes to hide the seriousness of this problem, while using it to justify more power.
A graphic on page one purports to show the change in “past month use of any illegal drug by 8th, 10th and 12th graders from 2001 to 2006.
Interestingly, it includes alcohol and cigarettes, which are “legal” drugs, but “illegal” when used by minors, and yet there are no numbers for prescription drugs, which are also “legal” when used by prescription, but illegal otherwise.
The chart shows that marijuana use by this group decreased by 25%, but there was no “statistically significant” change in heroin or cocaine use. (Meth, LSD, MDMA and steroids all fell sharply. (Remember Bush did not mention heroin or coke.)
Of course, the whole premise of prohibition is undermined by the fact that alcohol and cigarette use fell by 15% and 33%, respectively, without having arrested a single adult for simple possession of either of these heavily advertised and promoted substances. But that point clearly escaped them, as did much else.
It is very clear, that despite all of the success with reducing teen alcohol and cigarette use, and the problems with prescription drugs, the Drug War is still about cannabis.
On page 17, one will find this acknowledgement: “In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, past-year initiation of prescription drugs exceeded that of marijuana. Abuse of prescription drugs among 12 and 13 year-olds now exceeds marijuana use, and among 18 to 25 year-olds, it has increased 17 percent over the past 3 years…”
That’s right, more young people “started with” prescription drugs than marijuana. More 12 and 13 year-olds abuse prescription drugs than use marijuana!
Nonetheless, on page 2 there is this gem. Try to follow the party line:
“The importance of youth prevention leads to another fundamental insight: drug control efforts must aggressively target marijuana. Aside from the misuse of prescription drugs, marijuana is the drug most frequently cited by new initiates of illicit drug use. This means that when young people try illegal drugs for the first time, the odds are that they are trying marijuana…”
Now to make matters even more confusing, remember that they included alcohol and cigarettes in the chart on ‘Any Illicit Drug”, and alcohol and cigarette use generally precedes teen marijuana use.
From page 2: “The association of early marijuana use with addiction to other drugs later in life offers a compelling case to focus on marijuana prevention during the critical and vulnerable adolescent period. Data on youth drug use supports this approach: since 2001, youth use of marijuana has declined by 25 percent, while youth use of any illicit drug has declined by 24 percent—remarkably similar trends.”
Of course, this is just a variation on the so-called “gateway theory.”
Kids are now using alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs before they use marijuana, but still “the association of early marijuana use with addiction to other drugs later in life offers a compelling case to focus on marijuana prevention.”
Okay, but teen tobacco use is down more than teen marijuana use, and the prescription drug system leaks like a sieve…
Oh yes, and kids are also abusing over-the-counter cold medicines, and they also kill.
The rest of this section is just a rehash of the standard prohibitionist party line on cannabis, but I will include one more paragraph to test your tolerance for pain:
From page 3: “Beyond the strategic importance of targeting youth marijuana use in order to reduce youth drug use in general, there are also compelling health reasons to focus on marijuana. For far too long marijuana has represented a “blind spot” in our society. Notions carried over from the 1960s and 1970s—and perpetuated by popular culture—have characterized marijuana as a “soft,” or relatively harmless, drug. This view was not accurate in the past, and it is certainly not true today. It is now well-accepted that marijuana is addictive and that it can induce compulsive drug-seeking behavior and psychological withdrawal symptoms, as do other addictive drugs such as cocaine or heroin.”
See
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