"[T]he war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born, or from an early age on. In other words, we're punishing people for having been abused." - Dr. Gabor Maté, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
Viewed from just about any perspective, except building conservative hegemony, the "war on drugs" has been a spectacular failure. There are more drugs, harder drugs, and more powerful criminal organizations behind them than there were when the "war on drugs" began. Mass incarcerations have made us the world leader in imprisonment, but have failed to make a dent in the underlying problem. Mike Gray's short, incisive book, Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Ou--written in 1998--did an excellent job of laying out the multi-faceted failure that the drug war has been. But recently a new facet of failure has emerged, going right to the heart of the underlying rationale. Newly-comprehended evidence now shows that hard-core addicts--the de facto front-line targets of the "war on drugs" are themselves overwhelmingly the victims of early childhood abuse. Demonizing them, rather than empathizing and understanding them, so as to be able to actually help them, lies at the very heart of the "war on drugs." It's time to put an end to that. It's time for a war on the "war on drugs." Last week, a segment on Democracy Now helped explain why.
On Wednesday, Feb 3, Democracy Now did a segment, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", with Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician at Vancouver Safe-Injection Site (the only such site in North America), on the Biological and Socio-Economic Roots of Addiction and ADD. The segment title--derived from Buddhist psychology/metaphysics--comes from the title of his latest book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, which proposes new approaches to treating addiction through an understanding of its biological and socio-economic roots. The segment was introduced thus:
Only 34% of Americans oppose the health care bill from the right, making this position less popular than legalizing marijuana.
There have been four public polls on the question of marijuana legalization over the past year. The results were as follows:
Should marijuana be legalized?
Pollster
Date
Legalize It
Average
2009
40.5%
Gallup
Oct '09
44
ABC / WaPo
Apr '09
46
CBS / NYT
Mar 09
31
CBS / NYT
Jan '09
41
In 2009, 40-41% of the country favored the legalization of marijuana. By comparison, looking at relevant polling, over the last two months only 34% of the country opposes the health care bill because it goes too far:
Does health care reform go too far / is too liberal?
Only 34% of the country opposes the health care bill because they think it goes too far or is too liberal. That is decidedly less than the 40-41% of the country that faces marijuana legalization.
With only 34% of the country opposing the health care bill from the right, that means it would take a congressional district with a Cook partisan voting index of, roughly speaking, Republican +16 for the majority of people in a given congressional district to oppose the bill from the right. No Democratic Senators come from a state with such a right-leaning electorate, and only four Democratic members of the House represent such districts: Bobby Bright (AL-02), Walt Minnick (ID-01), Gene Taylor (MS-04) and Chet Edwards (TX-17). A handful of others Democrats are close, represetning districts in the range of R+12 to R +14.
None of this makes the health care bill popular, or that a consensus has been reached on health care reform. However, what it does show is that right-wing opposition to health care is nowhere close to a majority position nationwide. There will be almost no negative political repercussions for the Democratic members of Congress and the Senate who vote in favor of the health care bill.
A lot of Democrats are going to lose in 2010, but it does not appear that many will lose specifically because of their support for the health care bill.
Last Thursday, the House and Senate passed budgets for fiscal year 2010. The House version of the budget includes critical language that could open the door for healthcare reform in 2009--and not a moment too soon. Unemployment is skyrocketing, increasing numbers of Americans are going without health insurance, and Democrats are looking to pass healthcare fast.
The CBC's premier investigative program, The Fifth Estate was allowed to film a documentary at Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver's poverty-ridden lower east side.
It is a compassionate examination of the facility, its staff and the lives of three regular patrons. They made an interesting (and commendable) choice not to interview any experts, pundits or politicians for this program (other than 2 employees of the site). I highly recommend watching, including the extra interviews of the five main subjects.
It isn't a rosy picture, as the three patrons are each shown injecting drugs. One of the three, Shelly Tomic, had been off heroin for three years (but on methadone) and falls off the wagon when she has difficulty obtaining methadone, despite having a prescription. Shelly's case is particularly tragic as she is actually a named plaintiff in the lawsuit which resulted in a court ruling allowing the site to remain open.
More hopefully, Taz Prouting is admitted to the facility's detox program "Onsite" and on her third attempt, makes it through the very painful 11 day period it takes to get through withdrawal. Will she succeed in staying clean? What comes through is the value of the site in at least providing a way out for the most destitute and abandoned members of society. It easily cuts through any nonsense idea that sites like this would encourage drug abuse, as no one who wasn't already an addict could possibly walk into that facility and say "I think I'd like to try this!" An opium den this is not. For some background on the facility from my post last year about it, go here. Also, I'd recommend today's Greenwald who is discussing Portugal's experiment with decriminalization.
It has long been an oddity that Vancouver, Canada's temperate coastal paradise (and perhaps answer to San Fransisco), which usually ranks in the top 5 of various "World's Best City to live in" lists is also home to arguably Canada's worst pocket of abject poverty and endemic drug abuse.
Vancouver's lower east side is a little pocket of the third world 2 blocks from affluent downtown Vancouver (I was shocked at how quick the transition is when I drove through last year). The area has become synonymous for heroin use, and has been the locus of much drug policy discussion in Canada for many years now.
In 2003, Vancouver became home to a North American first, "Insite", a medically staffed, clean, secure and legal safe injection site for needle drug users. These things are not new in Europe, but such ideas are always delicate in Canada because there is a widespread belief that the US will punish us somehow for deviating too far from its War on Drugs orthodoxy. Insite was made legal under a special permit allowed in Canada's federal drug laws issued by the then ruling Liberal government. Surprise, surprise the Conservatives hate it and have wanted to close it ever since they've taken power in 2006. They've backed away before, and even lost a legal battle over it but they're taking another run at it as Canada gears up toward a likely election in the fall (with luck, Obama will have Prime Minister Dion among his congratulatory phone calls in November).
Jonathan Levine's new film The Wackness is great. It really is. It's depressing. No doubt. But it's a good movie.
Josh Peck, as recently graduated- prep school- drug dealer- hip hop enthusiast- virgin- depressive- bored Luke Shapiro and Sir Ben Kingsley as lost- frustrated- depressive- addicted- bored- tired Dr. Squires are excellent together. Their relationship gives the movie an uncompromising reality that infiltrates every moment of the New York City Hip-Hopped bildungsroman. All the actors have a great understanding for their characters and the director really gets you into the protagonists head. So much so, that your emotions twist and squeeze along with Luke's as he suffers through heartbreak, insecurity and a drugged out emptiness that pervades each frame.
As to the movie's authenticity: A+. I know kids from my New York City high school of whom this movie could very well be a biography. The film stays true to its location, its music and the complexity of each of its characters and the real life teens whose lives this story replicates. So, what about the drugs?
How come, people ask, Luke was never arrested for dealing drugs, even though in the movie he was often doing so in public, out in the open, using a converted Italian Ice cart? Why was there never the slightest fear of repercussions of his actions. Even though 1994 was right when Rudy Giuliani stepped up his anti-drug enforcement? Simple answer: HE'S WHITE.
Democratic Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma said Tuesday Barack Obama is "the most liberal senator" in Congress and he has no intention of endorsing him for the White House...
Boren, the lone Democrat in Oklahoma's congressional delegate, said that while Obama has talked about working with Republicans, "unfortunately, his record does not reflect working in a bipartisan fashion."
And Blue Dog Jim Cooper wants to overhaul entitlements, ie. cut Social Security and Medicare. How come no DC insider ever discusses 'overhauling entitlements' in the context of a national health care system to take the strain off of Medicare?
Apparently Artur Davis earmarked funds to a community college for which his staffer consulted. I'm going to guess that this knocks him out of contention for the cabinet.
While it is clear the War on Drugs has been a failure, it is not enough to simply acknowledge that reality. We need to look for solutions that deal with the drug problem without costly and intrusive government agencies, and instead allow for private industry and organizations to put forward solutions that address the real problems.
It's a safe bet that diabetics outnumber crackheads in the U.S. by a big fat margin, but the corn cartel's got carte blanche to fill us (and our gas tanks) with their Beltway-blessed by-products. So U.S. drug policies focus more on coke addicts than Coke addicts, despite the fact that soda's the more abused substance.
We've got a knack for waging the wrong wars, lately, and we can't even keep our conflicts from conflicting. Just look at how the War on Terror has undermined the War on Drugs; last year, according to the Globe and Mail, Afghanistan's poppy crops hit a historic high, if you will, providing more than 92 percent of the world's opium and heroin. U.S. officials estimate that the Taliban derives anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of its income from opiate exports.
Poppy production skyrocketed after we invaded Afghanistan in 2001; at a time when shortages of rice and wheat are shaking things up all over the world, the Globe and Mail reports that this year's poppy crop "will produce 40 per cent more than the world demand - which means that huge quantities will be stockpiled somewhere."
Afghanistan's farmers would actually prefer to grow onions than opiates, but the warlords and the Taliban have pretty much hijacked their fields, forcing them to grow poppies. Talk about a Catch 22-we can't root out the poppies till we uproot the warlords, whose power is fueled by those fields of fuzzy pods.
And our proposed solution to this problem is to carpet-bomb Afghanistan with an herbicide called glyphosate, aka Roundup, a Monsanto-manufactured weed killer. Ah, the military-industrial complex-is there any world crisis that Monsanto can't solve?
John McCain's all in favor of using Roundup to rein in the poppy posse, but the locals look darkly on the prospect of being under a cloud of chemicals. American officials insist that glyphosate is "one of the world's safest herbicides," according to the New York Times, which cites a State Department fact sheet claiming that glyphosate is "less toxic than common salt, aspirin, caffeine, nicotine and even vitamin A."
But Britain, which heads the anti-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, thinks this tactic's toxic in more ways than one, as does the Afghan government. So the search for a solution drags on while the buds and the bad guys flourish.
OK, so we're totally losing on the heroin/opium front in the Golden Crescent, but aren't we making some progress in our efforts to curb South American coke production?
Well, funny story, actually; our campaign to convince South America to stop growing coca leaves and switch to legitimate crops hasn't made a dent in the world's cocaine supply, but it's just about destroyed America's asparagus farmers.
Sadly, the MSM's too busy focusing on the follies of those other American Spears, Britney and Jamie Lynn, to soil its shallow soul by reporting that the American asparagus farmer is an endangered species. So it's left to us lefty, dirt-encrusted bloggers to tell you about the superb "stalkumentary," Asparagus!, which I'm delighted to announce is now available on DVD after reaping a bumper crop of prizes and plaudits; New York magazine called it "oddly brilliant."
Asparagus! documents the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking saga of Oceana County, Michigan, which was the asparagus capital of the world for thirty years. Then came the Andean Trade Preference Act, which gave Peru the right to export its fresh asparagus into the U.S. tax-free as an incentive to discourage drug production and trafficking. Thanks to this obscure bit of legislation, Peru's now overtaken Oceana to become "the world's largest asparagus industry," and the good farmers of Michigan are facing bankruptcy.
Filmmakers Anne De Mare and Kirsten Kelly put a poignant and compelling face on this freakish case of collateral damage, letting the local folks weave their tale of War On Drug-induced woe in an entertaining and infuriating film that will leave you shouting "S.O.S.", as in Save Our Spears!
Ironically, there's $15 million in aid to American asparagus farmers tucked into the current Farm Bill, in order to offset the unforeseen consequences of the Andean Trade Preference Act. See Asparagus!, and you'll see why Bird's Eye is right on target, while Wal-Mart misses the mark. Just say no, indeed! To Peruvian asparagus, that is.
Back on Christmas, Matt wrote an article called Five Untouchable Symptoms detailing five major problems facing the country that even leading Democrats rarely, if ever, address. Four of those five problems actually revolved around only two issues: America's extraordinarily high levels military spending and incarceration rates. Just how bad is the incarceration rate in America? According to a new study from Pew, 1 in 99 American adults are currently in jail. From the New York Times article on the report:
For the first time in the nation's history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bond issues and from the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
While this is only 2% of the public sector economy, like military spending and corporate welfare, it is also not an area of spending that is ever seriously questioned by any major politician. These areas of government spending are also major reasons why government spending continues to explode, even under the guidance of so-called fiscal conservatives and libertarians. Invariably, these areas of spending also disproportionately favor red areas of the country and pro-Republican demographics. It is a vast economy of hypocrisy, where conservatives talk about the need for personal responsibility and to cut government spending, but ultimately greatly expand, and redirect, federal and statewide spending in order to fatten the wallets of their strongest supporters.
Breaking and redirecting current government spending patterns away from these industries is also a key to building a long-term progressive governing majority. Not only would it shift the balance of economic power in America, but it is also a key to de-funding the right. I'd love to see a study of how much conservative directed government spending of this nature ends up in Republican campaign coffers or in the bank accounts of the institutions that keep the Republican Noise Machine working. That flow of money is truly the circle of life untouchable political symptoms in this country.
I know this primary has mostly been about identity politics, but for those of us who are trying to base their vote in who is going to be more progressive, we need to latch on to every peice policy of policy promise we can. On that note, the Washington Times is reporting that Obama conformed that he supports the decriminalization of marijuana.
This is especially relevent here at Open Left because as Matt Stoller has repeatedy noted, the war on drugs is one of the 5 untouchable symptoms.
Subject: End the War on Drugs
Factoid: There are 1 million people put in jail for doing what Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George Bush have done.
Marijuana is America's largest cash crop, and it is responsible for around 225,000 arrests a year ... Simply put, why do some people go to jail for marijuana and cocaine, and others run for President?
People who resort to dealing drugs tend to be scum. It's not like such people are going to become upstanding citizens with legitimate business concerns if drugs were made legal; they are most likely going to go on the other criminal endeavors. If they were capable of doing something else, they would have done it in the first place.
I know decriminalizing marijuana isn't the biggest issue around, but the war on drugs is one of the larger issues we face. Mandatory minimums on non-violent drug offenses are clogging our prison system with people the government thinks need to be protect from themselves. According to one study:
Contrary to the public perception that the incarceration of violent offenders has driven America's prison growth, the Institute found that 77% of the growth in intake to America's state and federal prisons between 1978 and 1996 was accounted for by nonviolent offenders. According to data collected by the United States Justice Department, from 1978 to 1996, the number of violent offenders entering our nation's prisons doubled (from 43,733 to 98,672 inmates); the number of nonviolent offenders tripled (from 83,721 to 261,796 inmates) and the number of drug offenders increased seven-fold (from 14,241 to 114,071 inmates). Justice Department surveys show that 52.7% of state prison inmates, 73.7% of jail inmates, and 87.6% of federal inmates were imprisoned for offenses which involved neither harm, nor the threat of harm, to a victim. Based on this data, we estimate that by the end of 1998, there were 440,088 nonviolent jail inmates, 639,280 nonviolent state prison inmates, and 106,090 nonviolent federal prisoners locked up in America, for a total 1,185,458 nonviolent prisoners.
Now, there are obviously non-violent crimes for which people should be incarcerated. However, when these non-violent "crimes" are protecting people from themselves, that is simply something that I don't think the government should be in the business of doing. Not to mention that, when combined with mandatory minimums, felony disenfranchisement, and racial profiling, these laws tend to be more of a war on African-American and other youth of color than anything else:
Nationally, more than four million Americans are denied the right to vote as a result of laws that prohibit voting by felons or ex-felons. In 48 states (with the exception of Maine and Vermont) and the District of Columbia prisoners cannot vote, in 35 states felons on probation or parole are disenfranchised, and in 14 states a felony conviction can result in a lifetime ban long after the completion of a sentence. This fundamental obstacle to participation in democratic life is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of black men unable to vote.
"According to statistics, lots of people have tried marijuana at least once. How about you, have you tried marijuana at least once?"
Yes 47%--50% No
The actual totals are probably even higher, since there are some people who do not want to tell a stranger that they have broken the law. If half of the country is doing something to their own body out of personal choice, and mandatory minimum laws remain in place, doesn't it strike other people as a bad idea to keep that something illegal?
Russert: Senator Dodd, you went on the Bill Maher show last month and said that you were for decriminalizing marijuana.
Is there anyone here who disagrees with Senator Dodd in decriminalizing marijuana?
Senator Biden, Senator...
(Laughter)
Senator Edwards, why?
Edwards: Because I think it sends the wrong signal to young people. And I think the president of the United States has a responsibility to ensure that we're sending the right signals to young people.
Dodd: Can I respond just why I think it ought to be?
We're locking up too many people in our system here today. We've got mandatory minimum sentences, they are filling our jails with people that don't belong there.
My idea is to decriminalize this, reduce that problem here. We've gone from 800,000 to 2 million people, in our penal institutions in this country. We've got to get a lot smarter about this issue than we are. And as president, I'd try and achieve that.
Good for Chris Dodd. Bad for Edwards and Biden. Granted most of the people in jail for these offenses are in local and state prisons, so the federal side isn't the most essential piece of the puzzle here. Still, almost half of the federal prison population is incarcerated for non-violent drug offensives, so it does matter. Also, it is very disappointing to me that image is more important than reality here. Is the "message" we send to children more important than the reality of hundreds of thousands of Americans in jail because of marijuana, or that half of the country has tried marijuana? Let me put this in a different perspective. If roughly half of the adult population of the United States has tried marijuana, that means over 100,000,000 Americans are in violation of this law. And if only 1% of those 100,000 are in jail because of it, it certainly seems like certain people and certain groups are being unfairly singled out by a law that the population is openly flaunting. Not only does that strike me as more important than any message we send to children, but it also strikes me that said message is self-defeating from the start. No matter what the President says, kids will quickly learn that a lot of people smoke marijuana from time to time, and almost everyone gets away with it.
Our laws need to be designed around reality, not image or message. Continuing to keep marijuana illegal seems roughly equivalent to the catastrophic failure of Prohibition eighty years ago. Not only should the government not be in the business of regulating personal behavior, it clearly is failing to do so in this area. All it is doing is making a criminal underclass in our society. And it is too bad that Senator Edwards, who usually says very good things, doesn't see that. Hopefully, his mind can be changed.
The "war on drugs" doesn't consume as much oxygen in the public square as it used to. In September 1989, President George Herbert Walker Bush, spoke from the Oval Office, held up a plastic bag filled with white contents and announced,
"This is crack cocaine seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House . . . It could easily have been heroin or PCP."
Did the Office of National Drug Control Policy use its funds and clout to influence elections in 2006? Henry Waxman wants to know!
I keep telling people: cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs are far bigger problems than they know. I keep telling them the GOP uses the war on drugs as a political tool.
Well, here we have Henry Waxman asking the Office of the Drug Czar and John Walters about apparent misuse of tax dollars in "2006 republican campaigns, particularly those described as "struggling". This inquiry is turning up the names of not only John Walters and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but of one Sara Taylor and Karl Rove.
