Drug Policy Archive

June 27, 2008

 MDMA therapy for post-traumatic stress?

If there's evidence that it works, and that evidence seems to be accumulating, the VA medical system ought to pay attention.

March 29, 2008

 Dust in the wind

PCP--it's not just for breakfast anymore.

March 07, 2008

 It's not just fossil fuels

Let's play a kids' riddle game. My short-term benefits on first use are positive, and can be obtained at very low up-front cost. In your social circle, I indicate coolness and status. Once you use me, you find that the (again, short-term) benefits of using are increasingly greater than not using, even if you start to wish you had never...

February 16, 2008

 Roid rage

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform fiddles while Washington burns.

February 02, 2008

 Concerning spine and clean needles

Needle exchange for addicts is like driver's licenses for illegals. The merits point one way, the politics point the other way. Guess which of the two Democratic candidates is facing the right way?

January 25, 2008

 Compassion

The Office of National Drug Control Policy is working hard to make sure that opiate addicts keep dying of overdoses.

December 03, 2007

 Can cannabis be a medicine?

Sure. But not smoked in joints or bongs.

October 08, 2007

 Keeping our eye on the main chance

The drug czar's office, the State Department, and the White House want the Afghani government to spray weed-killer on the Afghani poppy crop. The Pentagon, the CIA, the British government, and Hamid Karzai disagree. Giving aid and comfort to the Taliban, in the name of a policy certain to fail in its goal of controlling drug abuse, is madness.

July 27, 2007

 Exhale!

If pot caused schizophrenia, we'd see schizophrenia incidence go up and down with pot use. We don't. So it doesn't. Any questions?

July 13, 2007

 Making old, poor smokers pay for children's health care

Elderly smokers damage their lungs. That's not a good reason to make them pay through the nose.

June 20, 2007

 No, Giuliani didn't make a coke dealer his SC campaign chair

Thomas Ravenel was Giuliani's South Carolina campaign chair until he was indicted yesterday on federal cocaine charges. But reading between the lines, it's pretty clear he was buying the stuff and giving it away, not selling it.

May 29, 2007

 Hubris

The Bush Administration continues to act internationally as if we had the sort of bargaining position we would have if we didn't have our army tied down trying desperately not to lose the war in Iraq until after Mr. Bush leaves office. We don't.

May 28, 2007

 Nice try. Try again.

Reagan said in his diary that he thought Rudy Giuliani was crazy. Rudy's people are offering a letter from Reagan to Giuliani as evidence that they were friendly. That would be more convincing if the letter were signed instead of rubber-stamped. But wait! It gets better. The letter focuses on Giuliani's role in drug enforcement, which was a complete failure: while he was in charge, prices fell and volumes soared. Heckuva job, Rudy!

April 10, 2007

 Managing drug-involved probationers

The thing can be done. It just takes imagination and work.

April 01, 2007

 SACPA: a case study in mismanagement

Anyone looking for a case study in how the national drug control effort achieves much less than it might at much higher costs in money and suffering than it needs to can stop looking.

February 22, 2007

 Is alcohol a "drug"? Why the question matters

If alcohol is a drug, then drinkers are drug users. But if drinkers are drug users, then drug users, as a category, aren't social enemies.

February 21, 2007

 The new Bush drug budget

A long-time senior civil servant in the drug czar's office doesn't like what he sees.

January 29, 2007

 Better drug policy in nineteen easy steps

I have a drug-policy essay in the latest American Interest. Here's a summary and a link to the full text.

January 28, 2007

 Mushrooms and mystical experience

There's now good scientific support for the claim that psilocybin, the active agent in "magic" mushrooms, has a better-than-even chance of generating a full-blown mystical experience in properly selected and prepared subjects. Now what?

January 06, 2007

 Torture at home

What goes on under the name of "tough love": an account by a survivor.

December 26, 2006

 Afghan heroin in L.A. and the heroin price collapse

A dime a pure milligram? That means your first heroin experience is now available for less than the price of a candy bar.

 Revolving-door justice in Los Angeles

The L.A. Times shows how the system really works: badly.

December 12, 2006

 The crack/powder disparity: a way out?

Require Main Justice approval for prosecutors to seek 5-year mandatory terms for small crack cases. Reserve that tactic for strategic attacks on violent individuals or groups or focused crackdowns on flagrant open markets.

October 25, 2006

 Stupid pet tricks award ...

Having kids dress up in camouflage gear to "fight drugs." No, of course I'm not kidding. Even The Onion can't make this stuff up.

October 10, 2006

 Let my dealers go!

The drug problem wouldn't get much bigger if the number of dealers in prison got much smaller.

September 29, 2006

 Buy the Afghan poppy crop? I don't think so.

It's never worked before. It won't work now. Instead we should try to concentrate eradication and enforcement on Taliban-linked growers and dealers.

 Why don't we just buy it?

According to the UN, opium produced in Afghanistan was worth about $600 million at the farm gate in the last two years, according to the news, more this year: let's say $700m allowing for more production at lower prices. This is most of the opium in the world, by far. Farmers grow it to make a living, on the whole...

September 28, 2006

September 26, 2006

 The low-arrest drug crackdown

How do you break up a major street drug market with eight arrests? By concentrating enforcement pressure and communicating credible threats directly to the people you want to deter.

August 03, 2006

 An epidemic of isolated events

Radley Balko (the Agitator) has published a disturbing study of "dynamic entry" drug raids carried out by heavily armed SWAT teams.

July 30, 2006

 Social pressure to abuse drugs

Drinking rituals lead to binge drinking. That's a Bad Thing. It's worse when they invade the workplace, not least when that workplace is the U.S. Senate.

July 17, 2006

 Keeping mandatory drug treatment voluntary

The authors of Proposition 36 want people convicted of drug possession to get treatment instead of being sent to prison. But they're fighting to the death a provision that would impose sanctions on those who take the deal but either duck the treatment entirely or drop out before it's finished, as two-thirds of Prop. 36 offenders do. (A third never show up, and half of the rest drop out.) So they're for mandatory treatment, as long as it isn't really mandatory.

June 25, 2006

 "Immunotherapy" vs. "vaccination"

It's misleading to call an approach to treating a disease, as opposed to preventing it, "vaccination."

June 20, 2006

 The O'Reilly Tactic

... consists of saying more false things than his guest can possibly refute. My after-action report on being O'Reilly's guest.

June 19, 2006

 Fame, 15 minutes of (cont'd)

I'm on O'Reilly Tuesday at 5 and 8 pm EDT.

June 14, 2006

 Even real drug problems get hyped

Meth is a real problem, even if some of the people who say so don't know much. Media criticism is no substitute for research, though Jack Shafer seems to think it is. And advocacy documents aren't research reports.

May 20, 2006

 Undead ideas Dep't: Buying the opium crop

If we buy the Afghan opium crop, Afghan poppy farmers will grow two crops, one to sell to us and the other to sell to the refiners.

May 04, 2006

 Mexican "decriminalization" as seen from Mexico

I asked a colleague, a criminologist law professor at CIDE in Mexico, about the new drug law the media won't allow Mark to enlighten them about, and he had some interesting insights from a local perspective. From Roberto Hernandez: The new legislation was passed with the purpose of directing enforcement efforts to retail distribution, and away from consumption. There seems...

May 03, 2006

 More absurdity

When the media and the drug warriors mobilize to fight Mexican drug legalization, the fact that Mexico didn't actually plan to legalize any drugs isn't going to stand in their way. Under U.S. pressure, Vicente Fox has backed down.

May 02, 2006

 Radio of the absurd

The question "Did Mexico just decriminalize drug possession?" ought to be logically prior to the question "Is it a good thing that Mexico just decriminalized drug possession?" But opinions are more fun than facts.

April 06, 2006

 Is there a blue moon tonight?

Stop the presses! Nadelmann and Kleiman agree on something: the less said about drug policy in the political arena, the better.

April 05, 2006

 Chipping away at my 15 minutes

I'll be on KPCC (FM 89.3 in Pasadena) Wednesday morning at 10:30 talking about the just-published evaluation of Prop. 36.

March 21, 2006

 Merle Haggard and the drug war

The lyrics of "Okie from Muskogee" tell us all we need to know about the social psychology of the drug warriors and their political sponsors.

March 19, 2006

 Deciding What The Law Should Be

Just below, Mark rightfully attacks the DEA for using its enforcement powers to attack an effort to change the laws. That, I think, is right. But his statement that, "DEA's job is enforcing the laws, not deciding what the laws should be" may or may not be right, but it is a large part of almost every agency's "job" to...

 Politicized law enforcement

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration shouldn't care about, or issue press releases about, the political activities of the people DEA arrests. Selling pot is illegal. Working to repeal that law isn't.

March 07, 2006

 Such another victory ...

Once again, the Drug Czar's office announces that we're winning the War on Drugs.

February 27, 2006

 Brave New Relaxant?

Here we live in the age of Soma and I didn't even know it.

February 08, 2006

 Italy ramps up the drug war

The government rammed through a bill to restore criminal penalties for drug users.

January 30, 2006

 The grow-your-own option

That's my proposed law on cannabis: You can grow it, smoke it, or give it away, but not sell it.

January 24, 2006

 Child abuse dressed up as drug treatment

Maia Szalavaitz's "Help at any Cost" takes a good, tough look at the "tough love" child-drug-abuse-treatment industry.

January 22, 2006

 Tradeoffs

Cheap, low-quality methamphetamine from environmentally toxic kitchen-table labs, or expensive, high-quality methamphetamine from Mexico? You pays your money, and you takes your choice.

December 14, 2005

 Violence and street drug markets

The violent drug markets in New York City are now the markets for marijuana and untaxed cigarettes.

November 26, 2005

 Paying meth users to stay clean: update

Should the rewards be constant, or intermittent? Good question.

November 14, 2005

 Paying meth users to stay clean

San Francisco is trying it, and it looks as if it works.

August 28, 2005

 The methamphetamine epidemic:
    Even real problems get hyped

Reciting the mantra "moral panic" doesn't make real problems disappear.

August 19, 2005

 Meth vs. pot as a drug policy target

ONDCP finally admits that marijuana isn't the be-all and end-all of drug abuse.

August 11, 2005

 Query

How much have we spent, in public and private money, on convincing people that there's an undifferentiated category of bad things called "drugs"?

 Drugs and terror

My report for the Congressional Research Service is now up on the web.

August 09, 2005

 The addictive risks of cannabis

More kids are in treatment for cannabis dependence because more of them are getting busted.

 Meth gets a coat of Tierney whitewash

"Never as dangerous as alcohol in the first place"? Meth??? On which planet?

August 08, 2005

 Why shouldn't we say what killed Peter Jennings?

Jennings smoked. He died of a smoking-related disease. Isn't that worth mentioning?

August 05, 2005

 The Cloaca Maxima project

Someone finally acts on one of John Newmeyer's bright ideas: analyzing municipal sewage to estimate drug consumption.

July 23, 2005

 Tierney, OxyContin, and Limbaugh

(1) Persecuting doctors for treating pain patients, or pain patients for seeking adequate pain relief, is a bad thing. But (2) the diversion of potent opioids to the illicit markets is a real problem, with awful human and social consequences. John Tierney insists on (1), but wants to deny (2). Is Tierney (sub silentio) standing up for poor, persecuted Rush Limbaugh?