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October 25, 2009
The Drug War and Academe
Last week’s discovery that the clinically untrained representative of a brand new Academic Discipline was the dominant voice in a forum considering the medical use of cannabis was a reminder that, although the real heavyweights in such policy discussions are relatively few in number and unknown to the general public, they do exert a critical influence in allowing the drug war to confound its many critics.That's because the administrators of our war on drugs could not tolerate public disclosure of even a third of of their failures and disasters without being laughed out of authority. One of the main reasons it hasn't happened yet is the great skill of a small group of policy wonks I've come to think of as the drug war's own "Gang of Four".
All are widely published, often with each other; they are Mark Kleiman of UCLA, Peter Reuter of Maryland, Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon, and Rob MacCoun of UC Berkeley. The Gang's considerable strength comes from their deft mutual support while managing to sound sincere and reasonable in defense of a policy that can be counted on to fail ingloriously at whatever goal it sets for itself. They are aided in that feat by not mentioning that US policy has never permitted itself to be measured by reasonable standards, nor allowed its subjects to be studied clinically, except as mentally ill, criminal, or worse.
The Gang typically also cites the unreliability of data from criminal markets but seldom blames that circumstance on a policy that has corrupted all market participants, including law enforcement, for the four decades it has been a top national priority. In other words, the constant default in their analysis is that, despite its many flaws, the drug war is an essential policy.
The hard evidence behind my contrary assertions are unique data supplied by drug users that directly contradict many of the long held beliefs endorsed by policy "experts." Also their demographics and initiation ages, which provide the historical context in which a tiny criminal market suddenly began expanding very rapidly in the early and mid Sixties, data that has always been conspicuously absent from official accounts.
Of course, that might open the door to claims my data isn't representative of the whole criminal pot market, with which I can only agree. In fact, I think that market may turn out to be even bigger than the feds have either realized or dared to admit.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at October 25, 2009 12:49 AM