When A Drug Czar Lies About Marijuana,
Kids Don’t Believe Him When He Tells The Truth About Inhalants.

Or Our Failure To Close Down Gas Stations Is Clearly Sending the Wrong Message To Children That Gasoline Is Harmless.

(Ed. note: This story illustrates why I keep saying that marijuana prohibition is not just a failure but actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, making our substance abuse problems worse.

First, the economics of contraband. Making marijuana harder to get makes the use of more dangerous substances more likely. Obviously, we cannot eliminate every dangerous psychoactive substance from modern society. Kids abuse the darndest things!

Second, the prohibition culture is anarchic. There are no standards for contraband. This creates and imposes an atmosphere or subculture that is essentially anarchic while pretending to be restrictive. There is no single "drug culture," but there is a vast "prohibition culture" around the world. It is not a product of the attitudes of the "drug users" but the reflection of the irrationality of the "drug" laws.

Third, lies have consequences. Maintaining public support for the monetary expense, the use of finite criminal justice resources, and the violation of human rights required for the enforcement of marijuana prohibition depends a level of prohibitionist propaganda that is simply not compatible with the experience and observations of most children. Hence there is no credibility when children are warned about the real dangers of substances that actually do serious harm.

If giving medical marijuana to sick people tells kids that it is harmless, what does the ready availability of industrial products tell them? Especially, if we have undermined their critical thinking skills with mindless slogans like "Just say no" -- and undermining the meaning of words by broadcasting "anti-drug" messages between drug commercials.

The Orange County Register has a libertarian editorial policy and has consistently opposed marijuana prohibition. However, it practices standard journalism that is prisoner to the prohibitionist paradigm. So this story begins with marijuana and crack on the same line, and reflects no understanding of the problem being described.

Perhaps there is a bit of recognition reflected in the irony or absurdity of the first sentence: "The war on drugs has a new target." Is Exxon now the world’s largest "drug dealer?")

See
Miami Vice? The Miami Herald Prints More Lies From the Drug Czar About The Dutch
and links
October 14, 1998
From the Orange County Register
letters@link.freedom.com
http://www.ocregister.com/

KIDS’ INHALANT ABUSE DOING SERIOUS DAMAGE

The war on drugs has a new target. While cops and parents worry about marijuana, crack and heroin growing numbers of young kids are doing serious damage to their bodies and even dying from using inhalants, many of which are commonly found around the house and at school.

"As we look at the nations drug problem, probably this is the single biggest cause of unnecessary destruction in our society," Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Thursday.

Inhalants are everyday items that contain toxic gas or liquid, such as aerosol air fresheners kept under the kitchen sink, butane cigarette lighters left on the coffee table, and Freon stolen from a neighbor’s air conditioning unit. Some teen-agers have poured gasoline into a plastic bag, put their head inside and inhaled the fumes.

The effects of "huffing" or "sniffing" can result in death. Teen-agers sometimes suffer permanent brain, bone marrow, liver and kidney damage, McCaffrey said.