Lying about the Dutch drug policies and their consequences is obviously an important part of US policies. Is the truth important to the editors and readers of the Times?

As per usual, the Drug Czar plays the game of treating marijuana as all "drugs" when it suits him, while telling  specific lies about the results of Dutch cannabis policies. He also treats the anti-prohibitionist movement as a monolith.

Anyone who criticizes prohibition is a legalizer. There is no recognition that there is a separate marijuana reform movement. This is consistent with the prohibitionist line that advocates of medical marijuana and/or hemp really just want to "legalize all drugs."

It is important to remember here that the basis of all Dutch drugs policies is the separation of marijuana and the hard drugs. DEAland policy, as represented here, is exactly the opposite.)
See
"Here, if you want cannabis you go to a coffee shop.
In other countries if you want it you have to go to a man who might try to sell you heroin or cocaine as well."

July 27, 1998
The Los Angeles Times
Op-ed Page
letters@latimes.com
op-ed@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
http://www.latimes.com/

By Barry R. Mccaffrey

PERSPECTIVE ON DRUGS

Legalization Would Be the Wrong Direction Hiding just beneath the theory of harm reduction is a whole other agenda in dealing with substance abuse.

The so-called harm-reduction approach to drugs confuses people with terminology. All drug policies claim to reduce harm. No reasonable person advocates a position consciously designed to be harmful. The real question is which policies actually decrease harm and increase good. The approach advocated by people who say they favor harm reduction would in fact harm Americans.

Lest anyone question whether harm reductionists favor drug legalization, let me quote some articles written by supporters of this position. Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a Manhattan-based drug research institute, wrote in American Heritage (March, 1993): "Should we legalize drugs? History answers ‘yes.’ " In Issues in Science and Technology (June, 1990), Nadelmann aligns his own opinion with history’s supposed verdict: "Personally, when I talk about legalization, I mean three things:

The first is to make drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin legal."
(Ed. note: What Nadelmann actually said, "Personally, when I talk about legalization, I mean three things: The first is to make drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin legal—under fairly restricted conditions, but not as restricted as today.")

With regard to labels, Nadelmann wrote: "I much prefer the term ‘decriminalization’ or ‘normalization.’"

People who advocate legalization can call themselves anything they like, but deceptive terms should not obscure a position so that it can’t be debated coherently. Changing the name of a plan doesn’t constitute a new solution or alter the nature of the problem.

The plain fact is that drug abuse wrecks lives. It is criminal that more money is spent on illegal drugs than on art or higher education, that crack babies are born addicted and in pain and that thousands of adolescents lose their health and future to drugs.

Addictive drugs were criminalized because they are harmful; they are not harmful because they were criminalized. (Ed. note: Then why are alcohol and tobacco legal?
See The Relative Addictiveness of Drugs According to NIDA's Own Researcher
Prohibition makes the prohibited substances more dangerous.)

The more a product is available and legitimized, the greater will be its use. If drugs were legalized in the U.S., the cost to the individual and society would grow astronomically.

In the Netherlands when coffee shops started selling marijuana in small quantities, use of this drug doubled between 1984 and 1992. A 1997 study by Robert MacCoun and Peter Reuter from the University of Maryland notes that the percentage of Dutch 18-year-olds who tried pot rose from 15% to 34% from 1984 to 1992, a time when the numbers weren’t climbing in other European nations. By contrast, in 1992 teenage use of marijuana in the United States was estimated at 10.6%.

As I said, in 1992 the rate of reported marijuana use in the Monitoring the Future Survey was at its lowest point since the studies began. The percentage of high school seniors, 17 and 18 year olds, reporting ever having tried marijuana was 32.6 percent, essentially the same as the Dutch numbers.)

Many advocates of harm reduction consider drug use a part of the human condition that will always be with us. While we agree that murder, pedophilia and child prostitution can never be eliminated entirely, no one is arguing that we legalize these activities.
(Ed. note: Smoking marijuana is compared with murder and pedophilia! That will certainly lend credibility to "drug education.")

Some measures proposed by activist harm reductionists, like heroin maintenance, veer toward the absurd. The Lindesmith Center convened a meeting in June to discuss a multicity heroin maintenance study, and a test program for heroin maintenance may be launched in Baltimore. Arnold Trebach argues for heroin maintenance in his book "Legalize It? Debating American Drug Policy": "Under the legalization plan I propose here, addicts . . . would be able to purchase the heroin and needles they need at reasonable prices from a nonmedical drugstore."

Why would anyone choose to maintain addicts on heroin as opposed to oral methadone, which eliminates the injection route associated with HIV and other diseases? Research from the National Institute for Drug Abuse shows that untreated addicts die at a rate seven to eight times higher than similar patients in methadone-based treatment programs.

Dr. Avram Goldstein, in his book "Addiction: From Biology to Drug Policy," explains that when individuals switch from heroin to methadone, general health improves and abnormalities of body systems (such as the hormones) normalize. Unlike heroin maintenance, methadone maintenance has no adverse effects on cognitive or psychomotor function, performance of skilled tasks or memory, he said. This research indicates that the choice of heroin maintenance over methadone maintenance doesn’t even meet the criteria of harm reduction that advocates claim to apply.

Treatment must differ significantly from the disease it seeks to cure. Otherwise, the solution resembles the circular reasoning spoofed in Saint-Exupery’s "The Little Prince" by the character who drinks because he has a terrible problem, namely, that he is a drunk. Just as alcohol is no help for alcoholism, heroin is no cure for heroin addiction.

As a society, we are successfully addressing drug use and its consequences. In the past 20 years, drug use in the United States decreased by half and casual cocaine use by 70%. Drug-related murders and spending on drugs decreased by more than 30% as the illegal drug market shrunk.

Still, we are faced with many challenges, including educating a new generation of children who may have little experience with the negative consequences of drug abuse, increasing access to treatment for 4 million addicted Americans and breaking the cycle of drugs and crime that has caused a massive increase in the number of people incarcerated.
(Ed. note: There are 25,000 hard drug addicts in Holland. On the basis of the Drug Czar’s own numbers there are roughly 8 times as many addicts per capita in prohibitionist DEAland as in Holland.)
See Comparison of drug addiction levels in various European countries.

We need prevention programs, treatment and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. Drug legalization is not a viable policy alternative because excusing harmful practices only encourages them.

At best, harm reduction is a half-way measure, a half-hearted approach that would accept defeat. Increasing help is better than decreasing harm. The "1998 National Drug Control Strategy"—a publication of the Office of National Drug Control Policy that presents a balanced mix of prevention, treatment, stiff law enforcement, interdiction and international cooperation—is a blueprint for reducing drug abuse and its consequences by half over the coming decade. With science as our guide and grass-roots organizations at the forefront, we will succeed in controlling this problem.

Pretending that harmful activity will be reduced if we condone it under the law is foolhardy and irresponsible.
See
Legalize Marijuana and Reduce Use?
New Survey Puts Estimate of Dutch Marijuana Use Even More Below DEAland

Barry R. Mccaffrey Is Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy

Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

(Ed. note: And if you thought that the Drug Bizarro was bad, take a look at this response to Robert Scheer. Scheer began with pointing out that the Drug Czar had misstated the Dutch murder rate by a factor of ten, but the Drug Bizarro’s little helper does not address that.)
See
Robert Scheer Attacks Bizarro’s Dutch Fiasco:
"Follow the Dutch example of honest education about the drug problem"
see also
Steve Chapman Of The Chicago Tribune Says Drug Czar "shows no capacity to learn from his mistakes."

July 26, 1998
From the Los Angeles Times
letters@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/

DRUG WAR

Scheer points fingers about factual inaccuracies. However, he himself disregards the facts. Scheer wrongly says we are waging a "war" against drugs. Federal antidrug efforts are more akin to fighting cancer- the primary tools are prevention and treatment.
(Ed. note: Is that why we arrest cancer patients who use marijuana? We spend far more on enforcement than on treatment.)

The largest percentage budget increase has been in prevention: 15% or $256 million in this year’s budget alone. Treatment funds are up 33% over the last three years.

Scheer is wrong about Dutch youth drug use. The lifetime prevalence of marijuana use among Dutch adolescents is 30.2%; the U.S. prevalence is 10.6% (1992, most recent data available).

(Ed. note: Wow! First, 1992 is not the "most recent data available." The Reuter/MacCoun study cited above, from which these numbers are supposedly taken, has data from 1996! This data shows the Dutch rate slightly below the DEAland rate – 44.9%, but the Reuter/MacCoun 1996 purported rate of lifetime prevalence of marijuana use of 44% for Dutch 18 year-olds is much higher than any that I have seen elsewhere. I think that this is the rate for males only, and even in exotic Holland half the people are female, and as in the US they use cannabis less.
See http://www.trimbos.nl/indexuk.html (Cannabis Report # 7)

Scheer misstates how the Netherlands handles drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines. In the Netherlands the use and sale of these drugs is addressed with criminal law, not by medicine.

(Ed. note: Addicts are not arrested for simple possession and treatment is readily available.)

Dutch seizures of drugs are up. Dutch prison populations have more than doubled in the last 10 years, the bulk of this increase from violations of the Opiate Act.
(Ed. note: Some very odd points for him to bring up. Rotterdam is the world’s largest port, and the Dutch police aggressively enforce the laws against smuggling. This is a function of prohibition, not a consequence of "tolerance" – and certainly not of its marijuana policies. In any case, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, so this is something else that does not compare well with the Dutch.)

Children using marijuana experience learning difficulties and socialization problems and increase their risk of being in car and other accidents. See
Legalize Marijuana and Improve High-School Academic Performance? Holland Ranks First –
The US Very Low

Scheer is dead wrong about marijuana-related fatalities. A study of 182 fatal truck accidents revealed that 12.5% of the drivers had used marijuana-the same percentage as alcohol.

(Ed. note: Actually, that is not what he was talking about. Questions: Had the drivers used any other drugs? Were they all at fault? Is this study consistent with other studies? Does he mean that marijuana is as dangerous as alcohol? Is that the message that he wants children to believe?)