DdC

Numerous tightly rolled cannabis cigarettes were in evidence at a June 12 luncheon at the Heartland Institute, a libertarian policy think-tank in the Chicago Loop.

These doobies were emblazoned on the cover of the provocative, plainspoken book, Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use by Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason (“Free Minds and Free Markets”) magazine.

Yet the capacity crowd of 36 hardly appeared ready to kick back and smoke up: Mainly white men over 50 and conservatively dressed, they appeared more likely to break a bong over a slacker’s head than to consider Sullum’s argument against prohibitionism’s moral fearfulness and shoddy science.

Sullum’s thesis is that drug war policy has been ruled by “voodoo pharmacology,” the notion that certain chemicals can compel immoral behavior. Anti-drug messages depend upon the idea that illicit substances usurp users’ judgment and free will, and that any usage equals abuse. Punitive standards of interdiction and punishment compound the message that such substances inspire immoral behavior.

Sullum subjects this invocation of automatic turpitude to a withering critique. By examining the mythologized links between sloth, lust, madness, gluttony, and wrath and their purported chemical precursors (historically including tobacco and alcohol), he reveals the intellectual poverty of the right’s central conceit and retrieves the moral high ground ceded by uneasy legalization proponents.

By discussing illicit substances in terms reserved for socially valued drugs (notably alcohol) Sullum is able to examine what psychiatrist Norman Zinberg termed “set and setting”—the combination of environment and expectations that determines the qualities of a drug experience. When alcohol prohibition’s failure discredited the “demon rum” fervor of its proponents, our extensive cultural experience with drinking allowed us to encourage “controlled use,” Sullum says.

The demonization of illicit drugs has resulted in a cultural naiveté that promotes irresponsible use and the black market. In Sullum’s terms, voodoo pharmacology recasts illicit substances (and their users) as the dreadful “other,” by averring that alcohol and drugs are fundamentally different, one controllable and humane, the other corrupting and devilish. This intellectual dishonesty, spoon-fed to children, contributes to rampant social misuse of alcohol and other substances, as anyone familiar with drug use among adolescents knows.

Moderate, responsible drug use is the elephant in the room of anti-drug zealotry. Thus, even a politician like former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who supported consideration of decriminalization, was unable to deviate from the Clinton administration’s script that drug use is always bad. While then-U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) saw no contradiction in his support of a major donor, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, that sought to kill legislation limiting beer ads on television, calling alcohol “a product that’s in demand.” (Sullum finds Ashcroft’s self-justification “notably lacking in moral reflection.”)

If, as Sullum suggests, the fearsome otherness of illicit drugs is artificial and sags under analysis, then what allows the drug warriors to get away with such a transparent syllogism? At the Heartland Institute luncheon, Sullum dismantled the melodramatic, exaggerated morality that props up our denial of temperance’s possibilities.

Sullum detects this in the equating of “sloth” with substance use, which was key to pre-Prohibition anti-alcohol propaganda and now is used to demonize cannabis as an aspiration killer suited to losers. Sullum examines “amotivational syndrome,” the concept that marijuana use creates “dropouts” disinterested in achievement, which provided the psychiatric underpinning for cannabis prohibition once the ’30s-era “reefer madness” typography of violence had been derided. Discredited by the ’90s, yet still key to anti-cannabis sentiment, amotivational syndrome seems inconsistent with the strange case of Progressive Insurance’s Peter Lewis, innovative businessman, billionaire and “functioning pothead.” While Lewis may be an extreme example, Sullum contends that rather than candidates for That 70s Show couch, average cannabis smokers are employed adults with family and community ties—and therefore have reason to conceal their preferred intoxicant.

Drugs linked with artificially induced violence—cocaine, crack and methamphetamine—init ially seem a harder sell. Sullum argues that alcohol is the drug most associated with mayhem, but societies have long accepted the thesis of psychologist Craig McAndrew and anthropologist Robert Edgerton’s classic study Drunken Comportment: The variety of learned individual and cultural responses to alcohol confirms that “drinking does not necessarily beget violence.” Even the striking statistic that “about a third of convicted criminals are thought to have been drinking at the time of their offense,” fails to isolate the drinking activity from “personal and environmental factors that make both drinking and crime more likely.” Indeed, violent repeat offenders often cite their drinking or stimulant use as part of a “diminished capacity” defense (a ploy Sullum despises). The anti-cannabis fervor of the ’30s, Sullum notes, developed around lurid, racially oriented rumors regarding the killer weed’s propensity to inspire violence and fortify offenders with “Dutch courage.”

Sullum’s notion of voodoo pharmacology is founded on the historic attempt to lock in a causality that doesn’t exist. Such causality is a primary rationale for punishment. As noted gamesman William Bennett claims, “a non-addict’s drug use … is highly contagious.”

As befits a writer entering this hall of mirrors, Sullum is a bit of a contradiction: He has impeccable credentials as a libertarian journalist yet notes that his own “modest but instructive” use of illicit intoxicants formed the “seed of my conviction that it’s reasonable to expect drug users to exercise self-control.” Thus, his observations on the Silent Majority of responsible users have an authority the anti-drug lobbies lack: “Prohibition renders [such users] invisible, because they fear the legal, social and economic consequences of speaking up.” His book gains dramatic texture and validity via interviews with such users, including MBAs, software engineers, publicists, journalists, academics, a truck driver, and a social worker—all of whom understandably requested anonymity.

He implies that these users represent the “average” consumer of illicit substances, whose drug use is unremarkable when incorporated into mainstream lives. Given that most politicians’ survival depends on maintaining the fiction that, as Sullum puts it, “drug users are different from you and me,” this silent drug-using majority ironically perpetuates the careers of those who promote the drug war. Meanwhile, the visible minority of troubled users become archetypes in the cultural landscape, enforcing the “lazy pothead” (or the acid casualty or the enraged cokehead) stereotype.

Sullum’s audience at the Heartland Society was receptive to his argument that most individuals have ample incentive (health, employment, community standing) to keep their drug use in check. With regard to counterarguments that decriminalization would result in numerous irresponsible new users, Sullum references this hidden population of socially functional drug users to call for dispassionate evaluations of prohibition’s costs and benefits. In the meantime, policymakers’ continued insistence that dangerous excess (rather than responsible use) establishes the norm results in a morally and intellectually stunted debate.

The libertarian perspective provides a valuable intellectual counterpoint to the drug-war mythology but maintains a colder distance from adverse outcomes. For instance, Sullum argues that decriminalization of even stimulants like cocaine or opiates like heroin would not result in graver social conditions than the already dysfunctional landscape of the drug war (black-market violence, theft compelled by artificial “street prices,” and so forth).

Yet what of the inevitable spike of addictive personalities who lose control? Presumably, from a libertarian perspective, they would need to fend for themselves, an idea confirmed by Sullum, who noted in e-mail correspondence that he would not support diverting additional funds to beef-up clinical rehabilitation: “In practical terms, this kind of subsidy tends to undermine self-control.” Such a laissez-faire approach to dismantling drug prohibition could create new pockets of social pathology, undermining any decriminalization efforts in their infancy.

DdC

Sullum also declines to support a “sin tax” on decriminalized drug products, a frequent plank of left-leaning cannabis advocates. Yet any conceptualization of a post-drug war America must take into account the damage wrought on many communities by the war, as well as the need for a substantial addiction therapy regimen. Some kind of taxable “war chest” seems crucial to envisioning such a project.

Sullum avoids these thorny ambiguities of decriminalization for the simplicity of his ideas in Saying Yes. Indeed, this book’s sheer prescience makes any objection seem churlish. And in some microscopic way, the Heartland luncheon was like a hazy glimpse of the future, representing stirrings of consensus regarding how the drug war will end, even if it seems unimaginable for years to come.

With regard to the segregated personal destruction and diversion of law-enforcement resources that the drug war has produced, Heartland-style libertarians and ACLU-style civil libertarians are on the same side, even if arriving via different journeys. At a time when most “writing on drugs” consists of youthful preening memoirs, the coolheaded Sullum has produced a genuinely dangerous book—a white paper from that distant unimaginable future.

Mike Newirth is fiction editor of Bridge magazine and a contributor to The Baffler, the Chicago Reader and the anthology Boob Jubilee: The Cultural Politics of the New Economy.

Using Your Brain on Drugs By Mike Newirth
Source: In These Times Magazine (US) October 06, 2003
Contact: itt@inthesetimes.com * Website

CannabisNews Articles -- Jacob Sullum
Ganja/hemp lnfolinx



Addiction: A Brain Ailment, Not a Moral Lapse (excerpted)
Because prolonged exposure to abused drugs results in long-lasting changes in the brain, "addiction should be considered a chronic medical illness," the Barcelona scientists said. As with other chronic illnesses, including hypertension and diabetes, addiction and its treatment require "long-term strategies based on medication, psychological support and continued monitoring," they concluded. In addition, other experts have suggested, treatment of addiction should be fully insured with no limit on the number of visits covered. Continued...http://www.cannabisnews...1 7430.shtml

A Choice or a Disease?
Revolutionary Thinker
Study Into the Mysteries of Addiction
Lifetime of Study Into the Mysteries of Addiction

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, the Nuremberg Trials

Predicted wave of 'predators' fuels debate on stricter laws...
... Secretary of Education major preditors William Bennett and ex-federal drug enforcement official John P. Walters. The book was condemned as inaccurate and alarmist ...

Salon:Reefer Madness
Reporters were apparently too stoned to question two
hopelessly flawed studies "proving" that marijuana is a gateway to heroin.



Anti Drug Ads Can Lead To Increased Drug Useage
Winnipeg -- An American researcher visiting Winnipeg says U.S. anti-drug campaigns can actually make more kids try drugs. Martin Fishbein is professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He reached his conclusion after asking youths across the United States about the effectiveness of anti-drug commercials, such as "Just Say No" and "The Anti-Drug." Fishbein says the ads can make kids more interested in trying marijuana and other drugs. "The more kids are being exposed to these ads, the more prevalent they think drug use is," says Fishbein. "And the more they think that other people are using drugs, the more they think they should be using it too, and the more they intend to use them." Continued...http://www.cannabisnews...1 7450.shtml

False Drug Information Harms Kids
It'll Kill You -- Wait, No It Won't
Results Retracted On Ecstasy Study



FAQs about (DTC) direct-to-consumer advertising

What is DTC?
When you turn on the television, you can't help but notice the number of commercials that advertise prescription drugs - pills for lowering cholesterol or reducing hair loss, a nasal spray for allergies or asthma are just a few examples. This is known as direct-to-consumer advertising, or DTC for short.
What are Ethic Ads?
EthicAd is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping consumers, healthcare professionals, the pharmaceutical industry, and the advertising industry in the area of DTC advertising for prescription drugs
What is a "product claim" ad?
Product claim ads mention the drug's name, describes what it treats, and the risks and benefits of treatment. These types of ads are more informative than the other types, so the FDA regulates them more stringently.

This is your egg on frying pan, any questions?

Partnership for a Drug Free America: Slickly Packaged Lies by Jack Herer

Another recent development has been the formation of the PDFA (Partnership for a Drug Free America) in the media. PDFA, with primarily in-kind funding from ad agencies and media groups, makes available (free of charge to all broadcast and print media) slick public service ads directed primarily against marijuana.

In addition to releasing such meaningless drivel as an ad which shows a skillet ("This is drugs.") on which an egg is frying ("This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"), PDFA is not above lying outright in their ads.

DdC

"Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag - a thing with a soul that could mirror my own."
Adolf Hitler

White House Places Anti-Drug Super Bowl Ads... at it again...
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15251.shtml
Last Years $Million Bloopers... Our Children Are Not Terrorists February 09, 2002
During last Sunday's Super Bowl, the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy aired the first two commercials of a new ad campaign linking drug use with terrorism.
Continued...cannabis news...11967.shtml

The True Villain in Our Drug War is Prohibition

New Ads Hint at Change in War on Drugs
$3.4 million Government's Anti-someDrug Ads Labeled 'Super Bust'
Pricey Prime Time Propaganda
White House Spends 3.4M for Super Ads

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

Psychology of Drug War Ads?
Saying No To Propaganda
Partnership for Drug-policy Facts and Alternatives
Who is really behind the Partnership For A Drug Free America
This is your Ad Campaign on Tax Money. Any Questions?

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.
-The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light" -Plato

University of the Universe

LEGALISE CANNABIS TO HELP DEAL WITH P (meth)
Swiss Prescribe Heroin - Say Pot Should Be Illegal By Clare Nullis
Stepping Off Hard Drugs With Cannabis
22 Million Americans are Addicts
MEDICAL MARIJUANA DOCTORS AND RELATED ORGANIZATIONS



Cannabis Crusades: Anti-Pot Ads Have Backfired
Sometimes the most well-meaning plans backfire. The federal government's attempt to curb teenage drug use with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign dramatizing the perils of marijuana has backfired spectacularly. It is now obvious that these ads are doing more harm than good, and Congress should pull the plug immediately. Unless you've been living in a cave the last two years, you've probably seen the commercials sponsored by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Sensationalized and scary, these ads suggest that teens who smoke marijuana are likely to commit date rape, run over little girls on bicycles and even shoot their friends.
Continued...cannabis news...17407.shtml

Marijuana, Gateways and Circuses
Text of Dr. Mitch Earleywine Interview on NPR
The Roots of Reefer Madness
Bush's reefer madness
Poster

Cannabis prevents brain damage
Cannabis Blocks Irreversible Brain Damage
Cannabis and Endocannabinoids_
CLCIA present Cannabis and the Brain
neuroprotection
cannabis, cannabinoids and the brain
Nerves Need Marijuana-Like Substance
Marijuana Ingredient Helps Head Injuries
Natural Compound May Reduce Brain Trauma Damage
High Times for Alzheimers



"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there."
- William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937. Continued...sumeria. net/politics/invpro.html
Shadow of the Swastika



U.S. law enforcement spends $7.5 to $10 billion annually enforcing marijuana laws. According to the FBI, 720,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2001.
Keith Stroup, (NORML)

In 2000, there were 1,579,566 drug arrests in the US. Of those, 46.5 percent -- 734,497 arrests -- were for marijuana. There were 646,042 arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2000. drugwarfacts.org

The Ganjawar is a Product Sold by D.E.A.th to Profit Fascist ... DdC

buddha sez...

R.M.Coulage
Reefer Madness Poster
America was caught on the "hop"
Killer Drug Marihuana!

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