The first casualty of war

One of the more depressing aspects of prohibition – well, apart from the violence it creates through funding organised crime and terrorism, the families it tears apart, the environmental damage it cause, the lives it ruins through criminalisation and avoidable health issues … sorry, one of the many depressing aspects of prohibition is the way it’s kept in place by a combination of restrictions on open debate, news management and downright lies.

The one thing prohibition simply cannot stand is the truth, a factual examination of how much it costs, how well it works and especially how well alternatives work, neither it seems can it risk allowing the public to know what the drugs themselves actually do.

We’ve recently seen  the spectacle of the UN reaffirming it’s policy of prohibition. If we compare what the UN set out to do in 1998 – which was to produce a drug free world by significantly reducing the use and production of heroin, cocaine and cannabis by 2008 – with what they actually achieved which was less than nothing, it’s fair to say most people would have expected a sober assessment to have come to the conclusion the policy had failed. But no, we were told the deteriorating situation was actually a success and that the drug problem had been “contained”, so the UN decided to carry on regardless.

The main promoter of the UN’s drugs policy is Mr Antonio Maria Costa who has a simple way of dealing with difficult questions – he ignores them.

One of the “difficult questions” Mr  Costa is avoiding is the issue of  the coffeeshop system in Holland. In case you don’t know, coffeeshops in Holland sell, as their name implies, cannabis – or at least some do.  Although not actually legal cannabis has long been tolerated in Holland. So it seems reasonable that the UN wold have looked at the Dutch system to see what effect selling cannabis (semi) legally has on the market.  It’s so reasonable that in fact they’ve done it and just such a report has been with Mr Costa for some time now, but it’s never been published.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has been asking Mr Costa about this elusive paper for some time now and has a very entertaining (in a sort of masochistic way) video on its website to prove it (see here). As you will see if you watch the video on that page, Mr Costa is quite open about the fact that some papers are released, but others are “suppressed”, but no explanation of which are suppressed or why is given, but it’s pretty obvious.

Perhaps most farcical is Mr Costa’s explanation for rejecting the idea of cannabis shops based on his understanding of economics. According to Mr Costa the laws of supply and demand work thus:

According to economic science, the greater the availability of a commodity on the market, the more likely its consumption (via the price effect, but also thanks to psychological factors). Does this only apply to normal markets? My Office has examined whether there is a statistical relationship between availability of drugs and their use, and reached the same conclusion.

This is just so utterly unreal as to beggar belief, yet he says it and is, apparently, taken seriously when he does so. Seriously enough to impose prohibition on the world in fact, that’s seriously.

Apart from the excellent HCLU  site mentioned above, as usual the Transform blog covers this in some depth, so there’s no need to go through it again here. But it does provide the first insight into the need prohibition supporters have to suppress informed debate, sadly it’s not the only one in recent days.

Mr Costa did admit that there have been what he called “Unintended consequences” of the war on drugs however. The way to deal with these”Unintended consequences” according to Mr Costa is, of course, to do more of the same. One of these “Unintended consequences” is Mexico.

Last week saw a fair amount of coverage of the deteriorating situation in Mexico, which boarders the USA to the south. Over the past year or two the drugs war has been heating up with organised gangs feeding the US drugs market via Mexico. The situation is getting so bad with drug money corrupting the police and government that the CIA has warned that Mexico could soon become a failed state, right on America’s southern flank. Let that sink in a while; Mexico, a NAFTA member becoming a failed state due to drug war corruption, just another “Unintended consequence”.

For the first time ever the US – in the shape of Hilary Clinton – has admitted that the “insatiable” demand for illegal drugs from Americans is  the cause of this violence. Note to Mr Costa – the US secretary of State understands that demand creates markets, not the other way around.

So having accepted the cause of the problem the US is going to do something about it right? Wrong.  Thus far at least there is to be no change in the American drug war, the focus is still to be on supply reduction, albeit with a bit of magical demand reduction chucked in for good measure. But the big idea is to put more effort into restricting the supply for the “insatiable” demand for drugs. There’s an obvious flaw in this logic somewhere.

So now the Americans are involved big time in the war on drugs in Columbia,  Afghanistan and now in their own back yard. Not to mention just about everywhere else in the world of course. After decades of fighting the war on drugs, the problem just keeps getting bigger and more destructive and use keeps going up and more people get killed. It’s success, but not as we know it.

Last week also saw President Obama’s latest attempt to connect with his people by way of a “virtual town hall”. American people were invited to e-mail in questions they wanted answering. Only specific areas of debate were allowed, but even so the top four questions under the heading of “financial security” concerned the legalisation of cannabis and it was first and third under questions about “jobs”. Now there’s no doubt that the American Legalise Cannabis Campaign known as NORML (National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) had been mobilising it’s activists, but then so had every other political group from the gun lobby to the pro life movement, all that is par for the course in this sort of thing. It really does seem that cannabis law reform is forcing itself onto the American agenda.

Mr Obama’s responce? He mocked the people who asked the question.

I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalising marijuana would improve the economy and job creation … I don’t know what this says about the online audience, I don’t want people to think that – this was a fairly popular question. We want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.

Want a serious discussion about the alternatives to prohibition? forget it. Obama promised “hope” during his election campaign, well sure, you can hope, just don’t expect to actually get.

Over here we do things differently and it’s interesting to note the progress of one of Transforms campaigns  to get a proper impact assessment – a cost benefit analysis –  of the UK’s drugs policy. The progress? Nothing, zilch, not a dicky bird. Although they have recently got a minor back bencher to ask a question, nothing has or will happen.

The government will have none of it, because of course, if it did allow an investigation into the war on drugs, the whole sorry mess would be exposed. So it keeps the lid on.

For more info on Transforms campaign for a cost benefit analysis of the drug war, see here. Write a letter to your MP and see how you get ignored for yourself.

Lastly we have Frank, the government’s anti drugs advertising campaign “Talk to Frank”. We’ve covered this outifit a fair but recently, but their anti cannabis campaign is really starting to get annoying. Now there’s a lot of good advice they could be giving about cannabis, warning about the risk of paranioa attacks is reasonable, warning about the risks of smoking, warning about the risk to young people is especially valid; indeed there are many aspects which would make reasonable information campaigns.

But Talk to Frank cannabis adverts all concentrate on perhaps the one thing that cannabis doesn’t actually do. Acording to “Talk to Frank”, cannabis makes you “puke” as they put it. A radio advert running on Kiss FM and other “teen” stations describes this in some detail complete with sound effects of somone honking and slurring “oh sorry, there’s a bit in your hair”.

Lets set this matter straight right now, once and for all. It is very, very difficult to be sick when using cannabis. THC is actually an antiemetic  – it prevents sikness. This claim by Talk to Frank is wrong, almost totally, utterly wrong.

Now it is possible to “puke” when you get stoned, but to do so you have to  go to some effort and it usually involves drinking a large amount of alcohol first, or perhaps smoking it with some heavy tobacco (old holborn joints anyone?). A “whitey” isn’t totally unknown, especially amongst students, but actually being sick is rare enough to not be a feature of cannabis use.

So why is Talk to Frank putting this rubbish out? One can only speculate that they don’t have anything really, factually, bad that they can say about cannabis, so they lie. Anyone got a better answer? Actually, there is one: Is it possible that Talk to Frank bases it’s research on an old folk song from the 1970’s called “The ballad of Robin Head” originally by Fred Wedlock:

So Robin was dragged before the throne of Nottingham’s terrible King
For months now, I’ve been after you and now you’ll bloody well swing”
“But before I sentence you to hang for the evils what you’ve done”
“Tell me, what is this weed you grow in the woods I think I will try some”
The minutes passed in silence and the air grew awful thick. Then the Sherrif cried “Ooh, the colours man!”  And was promptly horribly sick

It’s hard to find any other reference to cannabis making users sick.

Interstingly they don’t put anything like that same amount of effort into warning drinkers that alcohol “makes you puke”, but I think most of us who have been there will know the truth about that one. Strange, if Talk to Frank really does base its information on 1970’s folk songs they should know about beers relationship with vomit.

Truth, the first victim if war. It was ever thus.