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Drugs

Drug-policy hypocrisy by Pat M. Holt The contradiction that has always been in our national drug policy is coming to light. It began when a survey showed that more high school students drink beer than smoke marijuana. This prompted some members of Congress and others, including Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), to suggest to Barry McCaffrey, the president's drug czar, that beer be included among the substances teenagers are discouraged from using. McCaffrey, and others involved in anti-drug efforts, said no. Targeting beer might diffuse the message about other drugs, and anyway they lacked legal authority. Very well, then, said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., we'll give you the authority. This touched off a massive, if under-reported, lobbying battle on Capitol Hill, pitting the beer and wine industries in support of the administration against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the surgeon general, and the American Medical Association. So far, the industry, led by the National Beer Wholesalers Association, is winning, but the argument isn't settled. The trouble is in trying to outlaw some drugs, most prominently cocaine and marijuana, while regulating others equally or more dangerous, mainly alcohol and tobacco. This "outlaw" policy includes public information campaigns against using the proscribed drugs and treatment programs for addicts, but its main thrust is enforcing prohibition by putting people in jail. This has resulted in the construction of more prisons, but it has not done much about drugs. Those who defend this policy use the same logic heard so tiresomely about Vietnam during the Johnson administration: What we are doing is not working, so we ought to do more of it. As if to underline the point, McCaffrey has recommended an additional $1 billion in anti-drug aid for Colombia and nearby Andean and Caribbean nations. Greater harm is done by the drug trade than by the drugs themselves. Because the trade is illegal, dealers charge a premium to cover the risk of going to jail if they're caught. This is generating billions of dollars, all in cash and all beyond the effective control of governments. It is corrupting our society. It is the driving force of many of the gang wars and murders in our cities. It is the motivation for a disproportionate percentage of income-generating crimes such as robbery, burglary, and theft committed by addicts looking for money to pay high drug prices. In contrast, violent crimes - murder and assault among others - are more likely to be committed by people under the influence of alcohol than of other drugs. Drug money has made Colombia ungovernable and Mexico nearly so. It is responsible for much of the corruption of police and other public officials in drug-plagued countries. This will surely spread to the United States if it is not stopped. Without the money provided by the drug trade, both the violence and the corruption will necessarily be greatly reduced. The way to remove the money is to make the trade legal so that it can be regulated. Alcohol provides a useful guidepost. Used in excess, it is so disruptive of societies, families, and personal lives that we once tried to prohibit it - "a noble experiment" (Herbert Hoover's description) that gave its name to an era. The people this saved from the corner tavern did not offset the social harm that came with the rise of bootlegging and gangsterism - precisely what is happening today with respect to cocaine and marijuana. So, we abandoned prohibition and turned to regulation. We have, for example, made it illegal for teens to drink and for anybody to drive a car while drunk. People still flout the law to do these things. Six times more teenagers die from alcohol than from all illegal drugs combined, Lautenberg says - all the more reason to mount a vigorous campaign to deter them from drinking. Consider the example of tobacco. When medical studies suggested a link between cigarettes and cancer, we did not react by outlawing cigarettes. Instead we began a steady, relentless campaign to persuade people to stop or not start smoking. This has dramatically reduced smoking. What would the black market be like if we'd taken the other route and tried to outlaw tobacco products? Alcohol and tobacco are greater threats to the public health than cocaine and marijuana. We meet these threats with a little coercion (controlling the circumstances in which people drink and the places they smoke) and a lot of persuasion. Treasury agents poured a lot of booze down the drain during Prohibition yet people continued drinking. Legalizing cocaine and marijuana won't solve the drug problem, but taking the money from the narco-traffickers will make it manageable. Pat M. Holt, is a Washington writer on foreign affairs. Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Christian Science Monitor Service August 5, 1999 http://www.nandotimes.com Prison And Jail Population Hits Record High August 16, 1999 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. adult prisons and jails held a record 1.82 million inmates last year, meaning one out of every 149 residents was behind bars, the Justice Department reported Sunday. The department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said in its semi-annual report that the prison and jail population at Dec. 31, 1998, rose 4.6 %, or 80,400 inmates, from 1.74 million inmates in 1997. "The population has been growing steadily," said Allen Beck of the statistics bureau. "I don't think there's been a decline in more than 25 years," Beck said, referring to 1972 when there was a slight decline in the nation's prison population. Beck also said there is a real decline in serious crime nationally. Jails are different from prisons because they are locally operated and typically hold persons awaiting trial and those with sentences of one year or less. In 1997, for which the most recent ethnic breakdown is available, the federal and state prison population was 49 % black, 48 % white, 2 % American Indian or Alaska Native and 1 % Asian or Pacific Islander. The female prison population grew by 6.5 % over the previous year, compared with the 4.7 % increase in the number of men behind bars. There were 14 times more men than women in prison in 1998. The report said state prisons were operating at a 13 to 22 % over-capacity, while federal prisons were 27 % over capacity. Who Spends More On Pot Than Wine? Sept 30, 1999 PERTH (Reuters) - Australia's reputation as a nation of big drinkers is going up in smoke with research released this week showing vast untaxed expenditure on marijuana. Researchers at the University of Western Australia's Economic Research Center have found that Australians spend almost as much on illegal cannabis as they do on their beloved beer and twice as much as they do on wine. "Expenditure on marijuana in 1995 was a little over A$5 billion (US$3.25 billion) or A$351 per capita," said researchers Professor Ken Clements and Mert Daryal in a paper entitled "The Economics of Marijuana Consumption." The estimated pot expenditure was equivalent to one percent of Australia's 1995 gross domestic product, far higher than was previously estimated. It represented double the expenditure on wine and three-quarters of the money spent on beer. Clements and Daryal also found direct link between pot consumption and drinking habits. Experience in other countries had suggested liberalisation of marijuana laws results in a fall in alcohol consumption. "Alcohol and marijuana seem to be substitutes, with cross-price elasticities," they said. "In most cases, (liberalized) legislation lowers drinking. Spirits consumption falls the most, then wine and then beer," they said. The researchers said they hoped to gain a better understanding of the economics of a drug which they estimate "is used by something like one-third of the entire adult population" but which "generates no tax revenue." Their paper also included a survey of University of Western Australia first year students which found that about 50 percent had used marijuana. Not surprisingly, the report found that legalizing marijuana would "increase consumption by about 13 percent ... and alcohol consumption would fall." Clements and Daryal said that "in view of the large number of people who have used marijuana" and that expenditure is twice that on wine "it is surprising that more is not known about these intriguing matters." Most of the marijuana consumed in Australia is grown in remote tracts of the island continent. (A$1 - US$0.65) Drug X Christian Childrens Fund This site is an official CashRing Get your ring NOW and start earning cash FOREVER! Join Friend Finder - largest Personals Site! Available Unregistered Domain Names Join Friend Finder - largest Personals Site! Find it Here FIRST! CLICK HERE to go to StarHeart A Proud Member of the One and Only Network Webmasters can make money! Press the Button to Submit Your Site to 500+ Search Engines & Directories World-Wide! sponsored by New York Times Books@barnesandnoble.com Webmasters can make money!

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