SpiralArchitect

Blog: Congress and the Media Should be Dubious of Office of Nat’l Drug Control Policy’s Claims
9/4/2008|The Hill's Congress Blog|Allen St. Pierre, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Executive Director

Of the many things that often leave me guffawed after reading the rhetoric and rank propaganda that has flowed prodigiously from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) from its inception in the late 1980’s—with self-anointed moralist drug czar 1.0 William Bennett charging forward with his blunderbuss blitzkrieg against anything he deemed ‘counter-culture’—is the incessant mocking, demeaning, and most disturbingly, dehumanizing rhetoric and ad campaigns often employed by our country’s drug czars when opposing peaceable citizens and non-governmental organizations who seek first a forum with government officials to discuss concerns with the current cannabis prohibition policies and to then, logically, explore viable alternatives to cannabis prohibition’s abject failure

Since the ONDCP’s inception, citizens and organizations that are not proponents of prohibition have not been afforded either opportunity or courtesy.

Why Mock Such A Serious, Expensive And Long-Debated Conflict Between The Public and The Government?

“A few weeks ago, Congressman Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced H.R. 5843, an ill-considered piece of legislation aimed at legalizing marijuana, a topic more often heard in college dorms at 2 o’clock in the morning than in the hallowed halls of our Congress. Indeed, at a press conference announcing the effort to legalize pot, Congressman Frank cracked jokes about how this law could create a “marijuana futures market” and acknowledged that the chance of the bill passing were not “high.”” -ONDCP blog post

The cannabis law reform debate regarding alternatives to prohibition such as medical access for patients, decriminalization and legalization are protracted and well-vetted social justice issues actively debated in the general public and media certainly since the founding of NORML in 1970.

The issue of cannabis law reform has been seriously debated in most every state and territorial legislature, dozens of major cities and in Congress since the inception of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (and the creation of Drug Enforcement Administration soon thereafter). Dissatisfied with federal cannabis laws, twelve states have decriminalized adult cannabis possession (HI, AK, OR, CA, NV, CO, NE, MS, OH, NC, NY and ME) and an equal amount of states circa 1996 have patient protection laws for medicinal cannabis use (HI, AK, OR, WA, CA, NV, NM, CO, MT, RI, VT and ME). Cannabis cases however, notably minor possession cases, still clog the criminal justice system and are at the heart of dozens of state and federal appellate cases that have largely established less—not more—liberty and economic freedom for citizens. The gravitas of the state and federal conflict on the issue of cannabis prohibition so contentious the US Supreme Court has had to twice intervene since 2001 on the specific issue of medical access to cannabis for dying, sick and sense-threatened patients (in both cases, the court strongly deferred to Congress’ prerogative to pass anti-cannabis legislation, regardless of how illogical or devoid of compassion, reason and science).*

I challenge readers, especially in the media and staffers on Capitol Hill, to peruse their daily news and locate federal bureaucracies that have the audacity of the ONDCP to publish and broadcast taxpayer-funded public attacks and blood libels against citizens who peaceably disagree with them!

Is it typical for Cabinet officers (which, amazingly is where in the federal government the ONDCP resides. Who knew?) to spend billions in taxpayer dollars disparaging, mocking, insulting and demeaning citizens and organizations that seek peaceful redress for their grievances suffered at the hands of an uncaring government? OK…Donald Rumsfeld comes immediately to mind…all right, Spiro Agnew too! But, they perfectly pale when compared to drug czars Bennett, McCaffrey and current czar John Walters (Bennett’s former assistant).

However, for the most part, civil-minded and respectful Cabinet officers thankfully rise above policy disputes and verbal attacks and, more importantly, do not employ significant public funds against their critics.

So why does the general public, the media and Congress let the ONDCP and Walters get away with this kind of abuse of government power?

Really, how often does one read about the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly attacking and employing millions of taxpayer dollars annually attacking EPA’s many citizen and corporate critiques? Does the head of the Veterans Administration create propaganda in TV commercials or on the Internet against military personnel and their family when they identify problems in the delivery of healthcare to veterans? When scientists and civil rights activists complain to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about the misapplication of science in processing evidence, does the head of the FBI launch a program to mock and discredit public critics? Well, thankfully, post J. Edgar Hoover, the answer to this question should be ‘no’.

What cabinet officer in the Clinton Administration got away with secretly impregnating popular TV shows with anti-pot propaganda, paying Hollywood scriptwriters to tow the government line on cannabis and was ultimately stopped by NORML (and Media Awareness Project) in a lawsuit before the Federal Communication Commission? I’ll give you two guesses, minus one!

Again, from its inception and adoption of slash-and-burn campaigns against citizens and organizations that seek alternatives to cannabis prohibition the ONDCP unfortunately continues to get a free ride from Congress and the media to abuse the rights of citizens, waste tens of billions in precious tax dollars annually on failed prohibition policies and obnoxious propaganda—all the while twisting the Constitution and respect for the rule of law into a pretzel.

“Oh, What Webs We Weave When First We Set Out To Deceive”

Despite the purposely misleading graphic included by the ONDCP to try to persuade the public, media and policymakers that ‘no one goes to jail for pot’ that in fact there are between 45,000-55,000 cannabis consumers serving time in prisons and jails for cannabis prohibition-related crimes. Additionally, criminologists’ and policymakers’ believe the actual number of citizens incarcerated on cannabis prohibition-related charges is underestimated by a large magnitude (i.e., tens of thousands of minor cannabis offenders annually are caught up in the ‘purgatory’ of drug courts receiving ‘shock incarceration’ for weekends and extended stays for weeks at a time because of…you guessed it…dirty drug screens for cannabis, which can be detected weeks after a person abstains from consuming cannabis. Arguably there are as many citizens incarcerated annually in America for non-compliant excrement than for possessing the actual contraband).

These ‘shock incarceration’ prisoners, and costs therein to taxpayers, are not accounted for in the ONDCP’s absurd claim that ‘no one goes to jail for pot’.

Lastly, to this larger point regarding the ONDCP’s wanton efforts to deceive the general public into believing that cannabis prohibition is inconsequential, not a serious topic for debate in polite society or costly to taxpayers, two major points:

1) Punishment, as the ONDCP would have the public believe, does not only simply equate to being placed in a cage—that’s the penultimate penalty the government can impose on a citizen.

One thing for sure that Walters and his spokesman, David Murray, don’t want the public to understand is that at the federal level, and in most states, when an adult gets caught with a little cannabis or growing a personal stash, the punishments for cannabis consumers can end with the sound of jail cell door closing after them. However, for the vast majority of cannabis consumers caught with a small amount of cannabis, there are myriad punishments imposed long before the state moves to incarcerate.

Most often, before the government wields its power to incarcerate minor cannabis consumers are in fact abundantly punished in the loss of their freedom, state-issued ‘privileges,’ ‘robbed’ economically by the government and routinely denied the ability to move about and plan for their future.

To wit, an average cannabis arrest for possessing a small amount (or worse, cultivating a few plants to escape the ravages of the government-created ‘black market’) can lead to:

• Suspension of drivers license for 60-120 days (even if there is zero nexus to driving);
• Loss of student loans for college;
• Termination from numerous jobs, professions and government service (including the military);
• Fines, court costs, ‘victim’ funds and drug tax stamp violations;
• Civil Forfeiture (amazingly, government seizes and charges the property with a crime, liquidates the assets and largely keep the money under the control of law enforcement, not the local legislature. Most citizens confronting forfeiture proceedings are often forced to forfeit property even though they were never charged with a crime);
• Removal of children and suspension of parental rights because the parent occasionally smokes pot (even if the parent is a legal medical cannabis patient);
• A permanent criminal record that will cause unnecessarily harm, grief and taxpayer costs to track a new ‘cannabis criminal’ every 38 seconds;
• Impairment of citizens’ abilities to cross into America’s neighboring countries, namely Canada and Mexico.

2) For nearly 40 years the government criminal justice data clearly indicates that nearly 9 out of 10 cannabis prohibition-related arrests are for minor possession (i.e., any eye-popping 738,935 in 2006).



Are Walters and Murray credible when they claim that ‘no one goes to jail for pot’ when such an overwhelming percentage of those arrested are in fact for possession-only pot offenses?

Notice that while the ONDCP claims that the incarceration rate for simple cannabis consumers is 0.3%, it fails to explain at all what happens to the other 99.70% of cannabis consumers collared by the law who are fortunately not caged.

Seeing Is Believing

Rather than show manipulated data for purposes of persuasion, please look at the chart below, based on NIDA researchers’, not narcs’ or moralists’, informed opinions on the known harms associated with currently illicit and licit and ‘drugs’. As you can see, if Walters and the ONDCP genuinely care about stopping Americans from accessing genuinely dangerous drugs, licit or illicit, cannabis would not likely qualify to be one of them.

(More...)

[NewsNote: This was messaged to me by jp82 and I thought I would share it with you all. Thanks jp82, this is an excellent write up and makes some wonderful points! I especially like the final blow at the end with the graph Do Our Drug Laws Focus on the Truly Dangerous Drugs. ]

__________________
.