Government Marijuana Expert Turned into a Bat
Back in 1937 Congress held hearings on Marijuana. Testifying was Harry Anslinger, who was the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 until 1962. He, like most bureaucrats, wanted to get a bigger budget and more power for his department. His main witness was a pharmacologist at Temple University who claimed that he had injected the active ingredient in marihuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of those dogs had died. He was asked by the Congressmen, “Doctor, did you choose dogs for the similarity of their reactions to that of humans?” The answer of the pharmacologist was, “I wouldn’t know, I am not a dog psychologist.”
Never mind that marijuana users don’t inject it into their brains and that the active ingredient in marijuana was not synthesized in a laboratory until after World War II so who knows what this pharmacologist injected into these dogs but it almost certainly was not the active ingredient in marijuana. Details such as those didn’t matter and his testimony was sufficient for congress to act. Marijuana use became a federal offense.
So how has that been working? The latest federal data show more than 100 million Americans have tried the drug and that more than 14 million used it in the previous month. Luckily the American public is not as easily fooled as its congress.
Considered one of the least harmful illegal drugs, marijuana nonetheless accounts for more than 40 percent of drug arrests nationally and consumes a vast amount of law enforcement’s time and money. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard says that U.S. demand is a key factor in the Mexican drug war.
“The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 percent to 70 percent by the trade in one drug: marijuana,” he said. “I’ve called for at least a rational discussion as to what our country can do to take the profit out of that.” Note that he correctly refered to the violence as being caused by the trade in marijuana, not the marijuana itself.
Numerous political leaders, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Mexican presidents, have suggested the time is right for open debate on legalization. In Congress, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., are among several lawmakers contending that decriminalization should be studied as part of an examination of what they deem to be failed U.S. drug policy. “Nothing should be off the table,” Webb said.
Kucinich has noted that both President Obama and former President Clinton acknowledged trying marijuana. “Apparently that didn’t stop them from achieving their goals in life,” Kucinich said. “We need to come at this from a point of science and research and not from mythologies or fears.”
One hopes that the science on which the country’s new marijuana policy will be based will be better than that of the 1930’s. Remember that pharmacologist who injected something or other into the dogs? He became Anslinger’s star drug expert later testifying that he had experimented with the drug himself. “After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat.” He testified that he flew around the room for fifteen minutes and then found himself at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot high ink well… OK…
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 46 percent of Americans favor legalizing small amounts of pot for personal use, up from 22 percent in 1997. In California last month, a statewide Field Poll for the first time found 56 percent of voters supporting outright legalization.
The times are changing.
PERF’s President Ponders Policy Poorly
The current head of Police Executive Research Forum,(PERF), Miami Police Chief John Timoney has an article in the current PERF newsletter titled “Ending the “War on Drugs”: This Will Not Be a Walk in the Park” in which he agrees with Obama’s drug czar, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowski, that we should stop using the phrase “War on Drugs” to describe our policy of drug prohibition. PERF describes itself as ” a nonprofit association of progressive police professionals dedicated to improving services to all our communities.” PERF is a sort of police think-tank comprised mostly of professional senior police officers that testifies before congress and issues reports on police issues. These are primarily well-credentialed, college-educated law enforcement officers which makes their publishing this article all the more extraordinary.
No matter how you try to explain that the war is against a harmful product, “people see it as a war on them,” Gil said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.” says Timoney. He goes on to explain that ” Gil is explaining that the Obama Administration wants to promote drug treatment, as opposed to sending drug users to jail. At the same time, he has made clear that the Administration has no interest in legalizing drugs.” He quotes Kerlikowski as saying “Legalization isn’t in the President’s vocabulary, and it certainly isn’t in mine,”.
Next Timoney states, half- accurately, that ” Clearly, for people who are addicted to drugs or who use them recreationally, the criminal justice system is not the best way of handling the problem”…of course the concept that for the overwhelming majority of drug users there is no ” problem” This “all use is abuse” premise comes from cops ignoring the medical professionals on fundamental facts and makes rational policy changes almost impossible. It’s tantamount to making the case that because terrible things often happen when people speed in their cars so driving is bad and drivers need treatment.
He continues along this line praising forced treatment encouraging using the “lever of the criminal justice system to push into treatment these people who, when you come right down to it, are sick. And I think that’s a worthy use of the criminal justice system.”
Then he goes on to talk about his reading of “a new study from the Cato Institute about the situation in Portugal, where they decriminalized all drugs in 2001-not just marijuana, but cocaine and heroin too. And according to the study, the results over the last eight years have been quite impressive. Rates of drug use in Portugal now compare favorably to other counties in the European Union, especially those with tough drug criminalization laws, the study says. And the drug-related pathologies, like sexually transmitted diseases and deaths caused by drug abuse-have declined dramatically in Portugal, according to this study.” Wow! That should have given him something to think about, right? Well he then says that this is nothing new.”… for a long time, many of the advocates of drug decriminalization have come from the libertarian wing of the right, people like William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman” . That is, apparently sufficient for Timoney to dismiss the conclusions of the Portuguese decriminalization policy. No more said about Portugal. I can’t figure out why he bothers to bring this study up since it has apparently made no impression on him.
Police are simply responding to citizens requests for help the chief says. Drug enforcement is typically the result of law enforcement responding to a mother who says “My daughter can’t walk to school or go to the store without passing
these crackheads or stepping over used needles and condoms.” Timoney goes on to say police officials often find themselves caught in the middle.” We’re sympathetic, and we understand that some of these people on drugs are just unfortunates. But at the end of the day, it’s illegal, and people have a right to demand, and they do demand, that police do something about it. Decent people shouldn’t have to live in the awful conditions caused by drug abuse”.
Of course, had he given more thought to the results in Portugal he would realize that those awful conditions police respond to are caused almost entirely, not by drug use but by drug prohibition.
