Effects
Based Shock and Awe Drug Policy
One clear line
of thought has stayed on course throughout the US-Iraq war, that is
"effects based operations" or targeting to accomplish the
end military or political objective without obliterating everything
else. It remains to be seen how at least 37,000 air "sorties"
and the associated bombing will affect the worlds future after the
US-Iraq War. US drug war policy for three decades has been more like
the carpet bombing required in the Vietnam War to achieve a desired
objective. And just like a policy of "destroy the village to
save it", it's also been an utter failure. Oh sure, there is
plenty of political spin claiming "advances" or "progress"
and drug busts de jur but the facts show a different picture entirely
from the political soundbites. In 1975 the Twelfth Grade lifetime
prevalence of marijuana use was 47.3%. In 2002 it was 47.8%. The average
prevalence for twelfth graders during that entire time, from 1975
to 2002 was 49.17%. It does not take a masters in business to get
a feel for that trend. Any savvy long-term investor would be delighted
with a stock that performed so consistantly over decades. In this
case however it illustrates a very disturbing trend. All of the rhetoric,
all of the prison sentences, all of the racial tension brought on
by the war upon marijuana users has gained nothing at all. Anyone
can look this data up for themselves, it is widely touted upon it's
annual release. It is from the Monitoring the Future Study published
each year by the University of Michigan.
The politicians
always seem to handily gloss over the hard truth, as much with drug
policy as with tax cuts for the rich and the after effects of "blowback"
from the US-Iraq War. Drug War as it's currently being waged has had
no effect except to swell the US prison population to over 2,000,000
with almost three quarters of a million marijuana arrests made each
year. Or about 315 times the total number of terrorist related arrests
made in the entire world in about the thirteen month period from 9/11
until the end of October 2002.
Our US politicians
talk blithely about creating a democracy with guaranteed freedoms
and human rights in another country yet those very same politicians
sell out Americans on due process and fundamental fairness here at
home. Two glaring examples have been overshadowed by the US-Iraq War
but bear serious mention.
Senator Joseph
Biden, the intrepid Democrat from Delaware, who on foreign policy
issues I largely agree with, snuck a bill of his last week through
the Senate attached to the hugely popular Amber Alert bill, legislation
introduced before by Biden, heavily protested and formerly called
the Rave Act. According to the San Francisco Bay View this legislation
will "make it easier for the federal government to prosecute
owners and managers of businesses and real estate if customers, employees,
tenants or other persons on their property commit a drug-related offense.
Persons convicted under this new law could be sentenced to up to 20
years in prison, fined $500,000 and have their business or property
confiscated under current forfeiture laws." This was done under
cover of the US-Iraq War and almost completely un-noticed, even on
Abu Dhabi TV.
Not to be outdone
by a mere Democrat, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert also last
week put the kibosh on any notion of sanity for current US medical
marijuana policy, saying through a spokesman according to the Oakland
Tribune, "House Speaker Dennis Hastert will not support federal
legislation to protect pot growers and smokers in states such as California,
where medical marijuana is legal, a spokesman for the Republican leader
said Thursday."
"Dealing
an early and likely fatal blow to the future of the legislation inspired
by the recent conviction of Oakland cannabis grower Ed Rosenthal,
Hastert spokesman John Feehery said, "I doubt very seriously
that the speaker would support that kind of provision."
What we have here
is a Democrat that clearly cheated. Joe Biden tacked on a "rider,"
an unpopular piece of legislation to a very popular bill that has
to do with missing children in order to get it passed over huge opposition.
Thousands of people mobilized against this bill and killed it during
the last Congress because it is so counter-productive and divergent
with simple Civil Rights. This bill makes dancing with currently illegal
drugs an offense that can get the owner of a venue or private home
hard federal prison time and their property seized, even if he/she
has no knowledge about "drugs" and made a good faith effort
to keep their show or party "clean." It's also a free speech
issue for sure to be challenged. Political rallies for drug policy
reform will no doubt be the first targets. Seize a large venue used
for a marijuana rally because there were a few possession arrests
and who will then rent space to such a rally? Gay and Lesbian rallies
and even Hip Hop culture will no doubt be on the federal governments
"target list." It's already rumored on the street that ticket
prices are going to go up to provide for the liability created by
this unfair and ill-conceived law.
Then we have a
Republican who is willing to see a man go to prison for life even
though he was within California state law and licensed by the city
he lived in to do what he did. Dennis Hastert apparently could not
even be bothered enough to answer directly about this brush off of
important marijuana law reform, he simply condemned Ed Rosenthal to
death in prison, and did it through a spokesperson, for trying to
give quality of life to people in need.
This is appalling
behavior on the part of elected officials. Even considering such a
course shows a callous disregard of what it actually happening "on
the ground." That is countless families broken up and inumerable
financial hardships for families caused not by marijuana use but by
marijuana prohibition. The MTF figures show regardless of the countless
casualties in this war against half of America's citizens that nothing
has changed. Half of all high school twelfth graders has tried marijuana
since 1975. That pretty much means that about one out of two people
you will meet in the course of your day has used marijuana at some
point in their lives. Now imagine them in prison. That's where our
political leaders want them to be.
Effects
Based Drug Policy
On the day the
US-Iraq War began, at about 1:00pm EDT, Col. Gary L. Crowder, chief,
Strategy, Concepts and Doctrine gave a long and detailed overview
of a US military doctrine called "effects based operations".
Basically it defines that instead of bombing for days to take out
an electrical grid, go instead for the power line that puts tens of
thousands of people out of power as if from a snowstorm. An elegant
solution to be sure. Why "carpet bomb" or destroy an entire
area to achieve what in the end is a political objective? Why not
just go after the real problem and gain the objective?
A twelve year
old in my hometown cannot belly up to the bar and buy a whiskey. However,
he is not stopped by massive bombing into submission or obliteration
of the owners and their bar. He's not stopped by Alcohol Prohibition.
He's stopped because bar/liquor store owners operate hand in hand
with the liquor authority to limit availability of adult material
to kids. It's really just that simple. "Not complicated."
Alcohol is a dangerous drug, it is listed as such on the top ten list
of health risks world wide by the World Health Organization (WHO)
along with tobacco, and neither of these two most major drug threats
merit life in prison or prohibition. There are not drive-by shootings
connected with the sale and distribution of these two dangerous drugs,
Prohibition of alcohol taught us that black markets bring crime and
violence. Just like we have with today's currently illicit drugs.
Prohibition was repealed because of the terrible lack of control necessarily
imposed by an artificially created black market.
Col. Crowder talked
about the old way of bombing a target by attrition, in other words
a detailed target list where each and every target was blown up and
when you get to the end of the list you're done. (To win by attrition
against marijuana consumers the federal government would have to imprison
half of every twelfth grade class since 1975 and not just a few politicians,
even at least one former President, Vice President and Speaker of
the House.) Then Crowder described the new way, to look for the specific
point in the system that would achieve the desired political objective,
instead of hitting every portion of an electrical power grid, the
generating plant, sub stations etc, go instead after just enough of
the system to satisfy the political goal. For instance, go after a
major power feeder line disabling a huge chunk of service just as
if would happen during a natural disaster. He said, "the point
here is, is that we don't have to attack everything, nor do you have
to destroy everything. If we understood what the effect we desired
on the battlefield, we could then figure out ways of creating that
effect more efficiently, more effectively, striking less targets,
using less weapons and, quite frankly, mitigating or easing potential
concerns for collateral damage and civilian casualties."
Shock
and Awe Drug Policy Reform
Everyone agrees
that the principle objective in world drug policy is to get teenagers
to use less drugs and to limit their availability to them. Currently,
the US "carpet bombs" American citizens to try and accomplish
this objective. This is horribly wrong thinking that has resulted
in more than 130,000 inmates in state and federal prison for felony
marijuana sentences alone and 726,000 arrests for marijuana offenses
last year. At a time when state resources are stretched to their limits,
states are releasing prisoners, some dangerous, and the war on terrorism
demands real dollars going to fight a real threat, our politicians
are squandering precious dollars to accomplish zero in terms of twelfth
graders refraining from marijuana. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has earned
the name "Mike the Knife" because of $700 million in cuts
in NYC alone. Scrapping the Rockefeller drug laws and halting the
arrest of peaceful marijuana consumers in New York would save enormous
sums of money and the grief such arrests engender towards the city
and state. As it would on a national scale.
In the very same
MTF Study that shows marijuana prevalence has stayed largely unchanged
since 1975, an entirely different picture emerges from the numbers
on tobacco. Tobacco cigarettes are more addicting and reinforcing
than heroin. Former FDA head Dr. David Kessler called them a "drug
delivery device" in the mid-90's with good reason. The nicotine
in cigarettes is the chief culprit. Between 100,000 and 400,000 people
die each year from tobacco related disease in the US (CATO, CDC) and
the MTF shows that back in 1977, 75.7% of twelfth graders had ever
used tobacco. That number has steadily trended down over the intervening
years to 57.2% for the class of 2002. No war needed, nor were millions
of pointless yet costly arrests needed. What has worked is "effects
based" education. No silly commercials with a teenager shooting
another teenager through a haze of tobacco smoke need apply, a more
common sense approach is a vigorous "We ID" program that
asks a customer for proof of age when purchasing tobacco products.
The same is also true for alcohol. One grocery chain in the US South
has a policy that every employee must sign for alcohol saying that
if the person looks under 45 to ask for an ID. 12 year-olds have a
difficult time buying whiskey, they don't have any trouble at all
going around behind the bar and down on the corner to get marijuana.
It's ubiquitous because prohibition inherently means no regulation.
Contraband cannot be legally owned so there are no laws governing
proof of age, zoning, quality control, proper labeling and legal dispute
resolution to name a few. Unlike the bottle of French Merlot I will
be enjoying later this evening with a roast beef done to a turn over
a hickory smoke fire. That bottle of wine has a tax stamp, it has
the alcohol content clearly marked on it as well as two warnings,
one to pregnant women and one against driving while impaired. No one
seems to consider the pleasant buzz derived from a nice bottle of
wine as evil.
THC on the other
hand, the most demonized active ingredient in natural marijuana, is
synthesized suspended in sesame oil and marketed as Marinol. It is
considered so safe and effective that Marinol was moved from Schedule
II in the Controlled Substances Act (Schedule I is where natural marijuana
resides, inexplicably because it is claimed there is no medicinal
use yet when packaged by a large pharmaceutical company in a gel-cap
it's magically considered a medicine) to Schedule III, a much less
restricted category of drugs, pregnancy category Class C. Much like
Tylenol with codeine, because of it's proven medical efficacy, safety
and lack of abuse/diversion potential. It is not only ludicrous but
it is bordering on negligent for US politicians to continue claiming
that natural marijuana does not have medical utility even as Marinol
is marketed. This is very much like only selling Vitamin C tablets
and outlawing the growing and possession of oranges and claiming that
oranges have no vitamin benefit. It is dishonest and stands more than
4,000 years of recorded history of marijuana use as medicine on it's
head. A whopping dose of denial.
Regulating marijuana
would end the cost-prohibitive, hundreds of thousands of useless mass
arrests each year. Sensible marijuana reform would take a page out
of the US military's "effects based" strategy and accomplish
the political objective of keeping soft drugs out of the hands of
children. Simply put a licensed someone between our children and ALL
drugs and end the "carpet bombing" and collateral damage
being caused by the War on Some Drugs and the vigorous and quite healthy
black market created solely from the war. It's time for a "shock
and awe" policy for currently illegal drugs. Admit that what
has been done is wrong-headed and counter-productive public policy,
that admission would inspire "shock". Then introduce facts
and science; risk-based regulation about ALL recreational drugs. That
would eliminate most of the problems that have been created solely
from Prohibition II. No doubt such a common sense and truthful solution
would inspire "awe" in a populace that distrusts politicians
even more than used-car salesmen.
And it would probably
be a good idea to get ahead on this issue, before the general population
becomes aware that they have been lied to since the 1970's about marijuana
and it's medical utility. According to AlterNet, the Washington Post
in 1974 wrote the only known newspaper story on a study which showed
THC and Cannabinol reduces cancer tumors, "The active chemical
agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice
and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection
of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered."
The researchers "found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers,
breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and
prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent." According to
the story the results were re-created partially by inhibiting the
growth of breast cancer cells in a petri dish study in 1998. Researchers
in Madrid fully re-created the results in 2000:
"The Madrid
researchers reported in the March [2000] issue of "Nature Medicine"
that they injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing
tumors whose presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI). On the 12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15
with Win-55,212-2 a synthetic compound similar to THC. "All the
rats left untreated uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma (brain
cancer) cell inoculation ... Cannabinoid (THC)-treated rats survived
significantly longer than control rats. THC administration was ineffective
in three rats, which died by days 16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats
surpassed the time of death of untreated rats, and survived up to
19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was completely eradicated in three
of the treated rats." The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed
similar results."
It would be a
really good idea if politicians started on real marijuana law reform
now, before the general American public realizes just how badly and
for how long that they have been consistently lied to. If your son
or daughter or father or mother had a cancerous tumor that might have
been helped by marijuana but was denied this valuable natural herb
by a vindictive crusade against medical use, who would not be upset?
And it is probably a safe bet that a Senator from Delaware won't have
a garden party raided by federal agents looking for drugs and a lucrative
property seizure. No, that will be reserved for the local block party
in the poor neighborhood where people have little means to legally
defend themselves. They will be robbed of their liberty and their
property just for holding a dance where one or more patrons get caught
with currently illicit drugs.
Michael Hess is
the Editor of BBSNews in Charlotte, NC.
