Candy Meth

The Dallas Morning News recently ran an article, "Danger in disguise: candy-flavor drugs", on candy flavored methamphetamine, which I read with a mixture of amusement and irritation: amusement to see politicians and police drag out the tired old myths they have been recycling for about 150 years, and irritation that they believe we still fall for them.
Police see candy-flavored amphetamines on the market and make the unwarranted assumption that the purpose is for marketing to kids, an assumption they make with no supporting evidence. However, drug dealers don't market to kids; if a kid with money comes along, a dealer will sell to him, but not as a major effort. First, kids don't have enough money to be interesting, and second, they come with dangerous baggage like parents, teachers, and police. Joe Camel can spend millions giving t-shirts and ball caps to kids, confident that RJR will be around in five or ten years to profit when those kids are old enough to smoke. Drug dealers don't invest in the long run. They know they will be either dead or in prison in five years, so their business is strictly cash today.
Strawberry meth is strictly utilitarian. The flavoring (and there are several other than strawberry on the market) is used to disguise the heavy chemical taste of amphetamine when it is sniffed, making the product more palatable to consumers.
It has the secondary effect of product differentiation: just like corn flakes or car dealers, meth dealers want market share. If their pink product has a reputation for potency or purity, it will sell well until others copy the trademark.
The same thing happens with other drugs. Around Houston Ecstasy buyers for years insisted on "blue dolphins" because they were the best. In the East Coast heroin market for years, heroin glassine envelopes with marked with logos and trade names. For a while in Baltimore, heroin dealers would circulate a neighborhood early in the day giving out small samples so the customers would know the quality of what he would be selling later that day. Whole specialty markets exist for premium marijuana plants.
Drugs are just like any other market; the same rules of economics and marketing apply, and trade names do appear.
As far as protecting children goes, amphetamines are a minor threat, ranking at most a distant fifth. If we want to protect children from the harms of drug misuse, we should concentrate our efforts on the big four, in terms of numbers of users and of harm resulting: alcohol, tobacco, antidepressants and anti-anxiety products, and prescription pain killers. Only after these major problems are under control, can we spare additional efforts for the minor ones.
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I'm Confused

I'm confused.

I recently visited a new doctor for a minor problem, and she strongly scolded me for using ibuprofen for pai relief, telling me it could raise my blood pressure to a dangerous level. She gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3 (acetomenaphen plus codiene) to use instead.

Years ago i switched from aspirin to ibuprofen because of aspirin's causing gastric bleeding and problems with blood thinning. I has always avoided acetomenaphen because of the high rate of liver damage it causes. Codiene is an opiate the use of which can lead to addiction.

As I understand it, I can use aspirin, and risk stomach damage, ibuprofen, and risk high blood pressure or stroke, acetomenaphen, and risk liver damage, or codiene, and risk addiction.

What I cannot do is use marijuana, an effective pain-reliever with no serious side effects, because it is a dangerous drug.

Am I just confused, or is something seriously wrong with our drug laws?

Confession of Ignorance

Confession of Ignorance

For more than the past decade, I have devoted the majority of my professional time and effort to the study of drug laws and drug use. Slowly I have come to realize that I know nothing about the subject. By "I", I mean all of us. I can discourse learnedly about how many people use methamphetamine and how the rates of marijuana use compare to those of 1975, but I have no basis to establish the significance of those data.
While "drug abuse" and "drug dependency" have medical definitions, "drug use" does not. What does it mean to say that many people in the United States use marijuana or that the Islamic world is largely free of alcohol use? We have no base-line idea of a "normal" society on which to anchor our statements. A drug-free world would be an impossibility, as would be a world of nothing but addicts, but where is our standard of comparison?
For instance, data indicate that 600,000 to 900,000 people, about 0.2 - 0.3% of a population of 300 million, use methamphetamine. But is that a large number about which we should be alarmed, or is it merely an outlier statistic about which we should be concerned, like a rare non-infectious disease that we would want to alleviate but which calls for no strong intervention? Frankly, we do not know.
Are there things that we do know: principles or generalities that would help determine a picture of human drug use norms? Some principles are available, although they are too general to do more than establish a vague outline.
Psychoactive drugs are as old as human culture. Some of the earliest known artifacts from the beginning of the agricultural age (8,000 - 10,000 years ago) are pottery shards containing evidence of the opium poppy. Beer is older than writing or baking (c. 6,000 years ago). Many of the hunter-gatherer societies that existed into modern times had at least some acquaintance with psychedelics. Note that this is a very weak claim. It does not distinguish between possible medicinal, religious, nutritional, or recreational uses; nor does it claim (except in the case of beer) wide-spread or majoritarian use within any society.
In many societies, including all current industrialized ones, the use of a predominant psychoactive drug is virtually universal. Between 80 and 90% of the residents of the current industrial world use caffeine daily (coffee in the Americas and Europe, tea in Asia). Before the development of modern water systems, beers, meads, and wine were universal beverages throughout the world. In the United States today around 2/3 of the population use alcohol somewhat regularly. In the Andean regions coca was widespread from pre-Columbian times to the present; and Northern and Eastern African and Arabian societies experienced widespread use of cannabis or khat. My own estimation is that until the middle of the nineteenth century -- until the development of safe drinking water and modern dentistry -- almost all English and Americans used opium on an almost daily basis.
Newly introduced drugs either establish a presence quickly or they fade from use. Coffee, tobacco, tea, and chocolate became major commodities in Europe within years of their introduction. Likewise, morphine, coca, and cocaine established themselves within a decade or less of their introduction in the mid to late nineteenth century; as did amphetamines and MDMA in the twentieth. On the other hand, drugs that are too toxic, have unreliable or unpleasant effects or bad side effects, like fly ageric mushrooms, morning glory seeds, or the various synthetic hallucinogens like STP, DPT, and others quickly fade, never finding a following.
The prevalence of any drug will vary over time. Alcohol consumption was probably highest in the U. S. at about the time of the Revolution and may be near an historic low at this time. Tobacco use increased after in introduction of cigarettes to majority use by about 1950 and has since declined to a level of about half as much. Cocaine use has had at least two major and one minor peak since its introduction in the 1880s.
Given a choice, users seem to prefer a "milder" drug. When available, coca was more common than cocaine. Khat users rarely move to amphetamines. Beer and wine continually outsell distilled spirits, which are usually consumed as mixed drinks, diluted to approximately the potency of beer or wine. Cannabis buyers seem to reject plants with a THC content of over about 8%.
Even the "milder" drugs can cause problems. Beer drinkers get drunk, get into fights, and even become alcoholics. Opium smokers can become addicts just as heroin injectors do.
Societies will accept astonishingly high levels of harm from socially accepted drugs. Tobacco is probably the leading cause of death in the United States today, with alcohol following close behind. Alcohol-related deaths, from car wrecks, to domestic violence, to assaults are unremarkable. The British public seems unable to recognize either tobacco or alcohol as harmful.
Social reactions to drugs seem to be more closely related to perceived group affiliations than to objective harm. The relationship of American drug laws to ethnic or cultural groups is well established.
Supply-oriented laws (prohibitory laws) have little or no effect on the level of consumption.
The statements are generalized observations, not firm data points, but I believe each of them is empirically testable and quantifiable. To the extent that this can be done, they can provide a theoretical structure of modern drug-using societies from which more rational policies can be developed.

Thinking about Legalization

Thinking about Legalization
Either this Congress or the next -- within the next three and a half years -- may create an exception to the Controlled Substances Act, allowing for the medical use of marijuana, either nationwide or in those states with state statutes allowing it. Religious and even recreational legality are not totally out of the picture.
But unless planning and preparation are done now, the result could be as dysfunctional as the present situation.
First, if medical use is allowed only as an exception to the CSA, then marijuana -- even medical marijuana -- will still be subject to the (even more?) vindictive jurisdiction and regulation of the D.E.A. Non-medical marijuana will still be a controlled substance under D.E.A. enforcement; and I am sure that they will insist on stringent controls to "prevent leakage" from the medical situation to recreational use. Since the plants themselves are fungible and the use cannot be determined until the plant is in the hands of the ultimate consumer, I am sure the D.E.A. will impose strict cradle-to-grave (clone-to-exhalation?) registration and tracking on medicinal plants and probably create (with court approval) strong presumptions against medical use. In short, people will still get busted and have to spend thousands to defend themselves and producers will be buried in paperwork and inspectors.
Even if the enabling statute keeps the D.E.A. at arm's length, some kind of regulation is inevitable. Nothing ingestable today is sold in an unregulated market. The four choices seem to be 1) treat marijuana was a drug, 2) treat it as a dietary supplement; 3) treat it as a food stuff; or 4) consider it sui generis and create a market regulatory scheme just for marijuana.
Since we are considering medical use, treating marijuana as a drug would seem the most reasonable, but it is probably the most impractical solution. If it were a drug, it would have to be approved by the FDA for marketing (I think any idea of a strictly intrastate, non-FDA plan is unrealistic). Currently, New Drug Applications take between 5 and 10 years to process and cost in the neighborhood of $500 Million and up. I see no one on the horizon willing to undertake this effort, and the additional time is too long.
The dietary supplement category is where marijuana seems to fit best, but the law prevents classification of any drug as a supplement. Since either a medical exemption statute or the current claims and uses for marijuana clear make a drug for supplement classification purposes, this approach seems unlikely unless the enabling statute specifically so categorized it.
Classification as a food would provide health and safety regulation of the growing and processing, but would not provide any way to separate medicinal and non-medicinal products or to limit marketing to adults. This also seems unlikely.
The best, and politically most available, method would be for the enabling statute to classify marijuana as sui generis and not subject to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act. The enabling act should decide whether it would be marketing outside the FDA or whether the FDA's jurisdiction should be extended to include it. Either way would be acceptable.
Precedents for sui generis treatment exist in the marketing of both alcohol and tobacco, the other major personal intoxicants. Tobacco was marketed before the creation of the FDA and, according to the Supreme Court, was omitted from The FDCA scheme. The Repeal Amendment for alcohol let regulation to the states.
Among the choices to be made are issues of jurisdiction. Should regulation be left totally to the states, taken totally by the Federal government preemptively, or shared between the two, as controlled substances are now handled? Should remedies and sanctions be administrative or strictly judicial?

Other issues to be decided include:

-Authorized vendors
--Pharmacies only?
--Direct producer to consumer sales?
--All normal retail outlets?

-Authorization for purchase
--Prescription only?
--Doctor recommendation required?
--Behind-the-counter with signed register?
--Medical marijuana buyer's ID card?
--OTC with buyer at risk of proving medical need on arrest?

-Sales to minors
--Not allowed?
--On doctor's prescription or recommendation?
--Only on prescription with parental consent?
--Sales to parent or guardian only?

-Frequency or quantity limitations?

-Labeling
--THC content?
--Producer's identification?
--Strain or hybrid type identification?
---Mandatory or voluntary?
---Need for variety standards?
---Recommendations for specific medical uses?

-Use restrictions
--Consumption in public?
--Protections against employment discrimination?
--Driving and other use restrictions?

I'm sure that the rest of you can come up with several issues that have skipped my mind, and the time to bring them up is now. I can practically guarantee that the ones I have listed will rather quickly lead to litigation (criminal and civil) and political fights. The current situation in California, and to a lesser extent in Colorado and Oregon, shows what can happen if these issues are not decided early.
I have presented questions, not answers. Many alternatives, including sometimes the alternative of doing nothing, are viable. But all of us together can start building a reasonable framework. Let's share ideas and solutions. Perhaps one of the reform groups could set up a web site to host discussions of these issues.

Project Innocence: 200 Exhonorations

Project Innocence has just celebrated (if that's the word to use for an exercise designed to work hard to restore people to where they once had been) the exhonoration of the 200th wrongfully convicted person through the use of DNA evidence. Since they have dealt mainly with those convicted of murder or rape, why is this important for those interested in drug reform?

The answer in two words: Mike Nifong.

Barry Scheck and Peter neufeld, co-directors of Project Innocence, co-authored the book Actual Innocence a few years ago that I think should be required reading for all U.S. citizens.
In that book they looked at the exhonorations they had obtained to that date and tried to determine what had led to the wringful conviction in the first place. The leading cause was eyewitness identification, which study after study has shown to be wrong at least half the time, but as contributing factors in over half the cases were prosecutorial misconduct and police malfeasance.

Prosecutors repeatedly suppressed exculpatory evidence, offered evidence they knew was false and abetted police and informer perjury. Polie coerced (or worse) defendants and witnesses, suppressed or planted evidence, wrote false reports, committed perjury, and conspired among themselves to commit perjury.

Crime labs routinely filed false or misleading reports, almost always in favor of the prosecutor's theory of the case.

One or more of these elements appeared in almost every case.

District Attorneys and police weild the most awesome discretion of any government agencies; and they are the most unchecked.

If it happens in the full publicity glare of murder cases, what do you suppose goes on in the everyday routine of drug cases?

Any kind of true reform must include more open operation of police and prosecutorial functions and more thorough civilian review and control of their operations.

Congratulations to Project Innocence: keep it up!

Hemp and Pot

While I sympathize with the hemp growers attempts to distance themselves from the Stoners and Slackers who get wasted on that evil marijuana, I wonder if they are really helping themselves by promoting an untruth.

Hemp and marijuana are NOT different plants; they are merely cultivars of the same species, much like Great Danes and Yorkshire Terriers are still dogs.

Hemp plants have been selected for low THC content (accidently) and tall stalk growth. Marijuana plants have been selected for moderate THC content (intentionally) and bushy growth. Hemp cultivation incourages stalk growth and discourages flowering; marijuana cultivation incourages flowering and discourages stalk growth.

However, if either hemp or marijuana is allows to grow wild (like the ditch weed in the Midwest, most of which is escaped WWII era hemp), over a few generations both will regress toward the norm, and both will result in a relatively tall plant with a moderately low THC content -- enough to get high on, but not really that enjoyable. And for those of you with a do-it-yourself bent, save the residue from your Hash crop and weave a shirt out of it.

I realize that marijuana legalizers, medical marijuana users, and hemp growers are just fellow travelers and not true allies; but all three groups will be better served if their campaigns are founded on the truth.

Americans

(Based on an excerpt from a speech I gave at the Houston NORML 420 Fest last night, advocating political action)
When I was growing up, my mother told me to always be nice and not to cause trouble. But when civil rights or liberties are threatened, I have to ignore Momma, and be aggressive, if not downright rude, and cause lots of trouble. Why? Because I am an American.
Americans once had a flag with the picture of a rattlesnake and the motto "Don't Tread on Me". They dressed up as Indians, illegally seized a legitimate merchant ship and destroyed its valuable cargo of tea by throwing it in the harbor. They stood on the Lexington Green and exchanged fire with government troops coming to take their arms.
Americans created a government of "We, The People", destroying kings and other rulers.
Henry David Thoreau was an American when he sat in the Concord jail for not paying a tax to support the Fugitive Slave Act and chided Ralph Waldo Emerson for being outside. His greatest disciple, the American Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote "A Letter from the Birmingham Jail".
American veterans in 1930 marched in the tens of thousands to Washington after the Great Depression destroyed their jobs. They lived in the parks and public spaces, demanding that Congress pay their promised pensions from the Great War and create jobs. They stayed, in spite of a cavalry charge by Douglas MacArthur and the U. S. Army, until Congress met their demands.
In the 1950s and 60s, Americans rode in the fronts of buses, sat in forbidden lunchcounters, crossed the bridge in Selma in the face of police with clubs, dogs and firehoses. In the 60s and 70s, Americans told LBJ: "Hell, no! We won't go!" and surrounded the Pentagon with flowers.
Walt Disney quoted an American (and Texan), Davy Crockett, as saying: "Be sure you're right, then go ahead."
We are sure we are right on marijuana, so, as Americans, we must move ahead. To quote another group of Americans, The Beasty Boys, we must "Fight for our right to party!"