Smart Approaches to Marijuana: A Response to a Tobacco and Alcohol Industry Funded “Study” of Youth Marijuana Use A new policy paper released on March 16, 2022 by the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), funded by Molson Coors, Altria (Philip Morris), private cash and other companies is highly flawed and does not advance the discourse on the effect of state marijuana laws on youth marijuana use.

Conclusion: The literature on the effect of recreational marijuana laws on youth marijuana use is concerning–and at best mixed. It likely will not be resolved until longer-term, higher quality data is made available.

Consequently, the debate on the effect of state marijuana legalization on youth marijuana use is far from resolved. The limited evidence presented in the CPEAR paper does not meaningfully contribute to that discourse. On the other hand, as the CPEAR paper concedes, there is growing and substantial evidence that recreational marijuana laws are associated with increased marijuana-related harms among adolescents and young adults.9

The CPEAR press release headline——that recreational marijuana laws are not associated with youth marijuana use——should be ignored, and instead, policymakers and advocates should focus on the observed increase in marijuana-related harms among adolescents.

For complete Release  CPEAR-Youth-Use-Debunked.pdf (learnaboutsam.org)

Being soft on drugs has FAILED, it\’s time to get Nasty!

BORIS Johnson this week launched a ten-year plan to help fight the war on drugs. What war on drugs? There\’s never been a war on drugs in this country.

“Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”

Ernest Hemingway.

By CAROLE MALONE Dec 11, 2021

There absolutely should have been because maybe the 3,000 people who died of drug overdoses last year might not have (that death toll is more than all the stabbings and car crash deaths put together. And if there had been a war on drugs we may not now have 300,000 drug users whose lives have been torn apart by their savage addiction.

• UK trade has shrunk since Brexit while EU thrives – data
• Staff Call For Anonymous Tip-Off System After Drugs In Parliament Allegations

But even with drugs deaths in England and Wales at their highest since records began and despite Boris’s 10-year strategy ‑ which doesn’t go anywhere near far enough as he seems to just want to provide rehab for addicts as opposed to stopping them becoming addicts ‑ the decriminalisation mob are still out there shouting for dangerous drugs to be legalised.

And for the life of me I just don’t understand why. We have rocketing drug deaths and they say “Hey here’s a plan ‑ let’s legalise them.”

Sorry, but drugs are illegal precisely because they’re dangerous. If someone can make cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy safe, I’d say fine ‑ let everyone have them. But they can’t.

The decriminalise mob keep citing Portugal as their trump card: “It worked there,” they scream.

Well, yes, it did for a couple of years. Drug deaths did go down. But then they rocketed again as did drug use especially among teens. As did opportunistic thefts and robberies.

So No, Portugal didn’t work. And unless you can reduce the number of people taking drugs decriminalise you can’t reduce the harm.

The fact drugs are illegal stops many people taking them.

Decriminalisation of drugs will never chase away the dealers

“But alcohol and tobacco are drugs and they’re legal,” scream the decriminalisers. “Yes, they are and both kill huge numbers every year. And even if drugs are regulated it doesn’t mean they’re safe and won’t harm people. It just means they’ll be easy to get. And the money spent buying them will go into big business and on taxes as opposed to the drug dealers. So, why is that any better?

And of course, decriminalisation will never chase away the dealers. They’ll just sell stronger, more dangerous stuff at rock bottom prices ‑ undercutting those selling them legally.

Just look at alcohol and tobacco. Both are legal but it doesn’t stop HM Revenue and Customs from spending millions every year trying to catch the gangs smuggling in cheap (illegal) booze and fags.

The fact is that in countries like Japan and Singapore drug use has been virtually eliminated. And that’s because of incredibly tough drug laws and aggressive enforcement.

Boris wants to spend millions treating people who are already addicted instead of properly smashing the supply of drugs and throwing the book at dealers.

His idea of getting tough is for police to seize the dealers’ phones and then text middle-class lifestyle users to scare them. He’s also suggesting we take away their passports or      drivers’ licences.

And it might be good if police forces actually started taking drug abuse seriously. Many have admitted they don’t even pursue cases of drug possession anymore and fixed penalty notices for cannabis ‑ which causes psychosis, schizophrenia, respiratory problems ‑ have halved in recent years.

As Priti Patel said this week, drugs ruin our children’s lives. They destroy families, relationships, and communities. They cause a massive increase both in violent and petty crime. So why the hell would we want to legalise them?

We’ve had crackdowns before and none of them worked for the simple reason we’ve never really cracked down. This time MUST be different. For our children\’s sake.

For complete article go to Being soft on drugs has FAILED, it\’s time to get nasty – says CAROLE MALONE Express.co.uk

China and synthetic drugs: Geopolitics trumps counternarcotics cooperation

…China is also the principal supplier of precursor chemicals for methamphetamine production in East Asia and Mexico. Between the 1990s and mid-2010s, meth was produced in southern China both for domestic consumption and export to Australia and throughout East Asia. At first Beijing was defensive and dismissive about any claims that China was the supply source of Australia’s meth epidemic. But as time passed, it grew willing to cooperate with Canberra. Sino-Australian cooperation culminated in the creation in November 2015 of a joint bilateral counternarcotics task force, Task Force Blaze, which scored important interdiction successes, repeatedly seizing large shipments of meth from China to Australia and leading to arrests of important drug traffickers in both countries. China also shut down domestic production of meth.

But meth precursors and pre-precursors from China continue to head to illicit drug producers in Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar. Chinese drug smuggling networks, such as the Triads, then distribute meth across Asia and to Australia and New Zealand. Mexican drug cartels also source their precursors from China and sell finished meth to the U.S. and elsewhere.

CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICIES

Fentanyl scheduling and China’s adoption of stricter mail monitoring has created some deterrence effects. Instead of finished fentanyl being shipped directly to the U.S., most smuggling now takes place via Mexico. Like with meth, Mexican criminal groups source fentanyl precursors, and increasingly non-scheduled pre-precursors in China, and then traffic finished fentanyl from Mexico to the U.S.

Some Chinese sellers specifically cater to Mexican drug traffickers. As investigative C4ADS research showed, Chinese sellers bundle uncontrolled fentanyl and meth precursors and common cocaine fillers in their Spanish-language advertisements and highlight their capacities to “clear customs in Mexico.”

For complete article China and synthetic drugs: Geopolitics trumps counternarcotics cooperation (brookings.edu)

The Super Bowl of Sin Taxes

State legalizations of sports betting and marijuana prove government is about taking, not helping.

Daniel Henninger       Feb. 16, 2022      WALL STREET JOURNAL

Some 31 million Americans are estimated to have bet more than $7 billion on some aspect of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI, including who won the coin flip and whether Odell Beckham Jr. would score a touchdown. For Joe Biden and the Democrats, Rams-Bengals was a win-win, a sure bet.

Odds are that no small amount of the $7 billion wagered came out of the megabillions Mr. Biden’s mailed out as stimulus checks. Winning a wager is more fun than paying the rent, but when you win more than chump change, Mr. Biden gets a piece of the action. Gambling winnings of $600 or more are taxable as federal income, reportable on IRS Form W-2G and subject to withholding at 24%. The state in which you placed the winning bet also wants its piece. In the new world of legal sports betting, no one will get more hops through the end zone than Uncle Sam.

I don’t expect the Biden White House or Nancy Pelosi will be heard saying that the cost of their pandemic legislation will be close to “zero” because some recipients’ gambling payouts will be coming back to the Treasury as taxes. No doubt some vestigial sense endures that it’s unseemly for the government to make money from an activity with a dark underbelly.

The proliferation of TV commercials by betting services such as DraftKings and FanDuel was enabled after the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that a federal law banning sports betting in most states was an unconstitutional infringement of states’ rights. Since then, 30 states and the District of Columbia have legalized betting on sports. New Jersey, the U.S. sports-bet capital, took in $200 million in gambling tax revenue last year.

Recreational marijuana is now legal in 18 states (and, naturally, Washington, D.C.), often after the voters’ approval in referendums. A Pew poll last year found 60% support for medical and recreational marijuana use. New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of the most reliable weather vanes in politics, has just given legal pot his enthusiastic support. He plans to introduce a federal legalization bill in April. “As majority leader, I can set priorities,” Mr. Schumer said last week. “This is a priority for me.” It has a cannabis tax that starts at 10% and rises eventually to 25%.

I’d say we are learning something useful from the concurrent political approval of taxable gambling and marijuana. We are learning that much of contemporary American government, which typically defends itself as providing for society-enhancing public “needs,” is in fact now amoral.

After decades of pretense from government about its good intentions, ultimately it doesn’t much care one way or the other anymore, no matter whether the issue is social welfare spending inside the Build Back Better bill or legalizing a psychoactive drug. Any previous pro-social purpose has been overwhelmed by the crude need simply to maximize revenue no matter the source, especially in such open-spigot Democratic spending states as New York, New Jersey and Illinois. In California, legal betting has been blocked by several casino-operating Native American tribes.

We are legalizing marijuana just as opioid addiction and overdoses from “recreational” fentanyl skyrocket. The phenomenon of gambling addiction is well established, and since sports betting is often a repetitive, screen-based activity, the dopamine hook surely will kick in for some percentage of sports bettors just as TikTok has pulled many adolescent girls into its can’t-stop video world, as described recently in this newspaper.

In virtually all the legalizations of marijuana or gambling, the politicians include language about creating programs for “prevention” and rehabilitation. It’s boilerplate, a pro forma caveat that rarely delivers.

Recall how for decades proponents of deinstitutionalizing the severely mentally ill have promised programs to provide needed meds to patients outside a hospital setting. Well, look at the streets of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, filled with the disorganized, often violent mentally ill and drug addicts.

The burden of any damage done to individuals from on-demand marijuana or betting will be borne by their desperate families. Governments will get the one thing they want–a steady stream of tax revenue from both users and the commercial cannabis and sports-bet interests piling in to exploit these compulsions.

When more people understand that the goal of governments today is to take rather than help, as they piously claim, perhaps we can have a sensible discussion about whom to tax and for what purposes.

For complete story go to Wall Street Journal Opinion

UK: A Generational Shift In The Demand For Drugs?

What does the 2021 drug strategy say about drug prevention?

• Alcohol & Drugs
• 2021 drug strategy, drug prevention

Demand reduction

Drugs prevention or demand reduction are typically the most difficult to attain objectives in any drug strategy and many commentators argue that it is not possible for government to control their citizens’ demand for drugs — particularly within a global economy with drugs easily available for purchase in a wide variety of ways. Nonetheless, most governments seem compelled to try and much of the media coverage leading up to the publication of the strategy was about how the government intended to reduce demand for “hard” drugs among middle class users by rescinding passports for those found in possession of Class A substances. Here’s the government’s objective as set out in the strategy:

We will work with experts to encourage people to change their attitudes and behaviour by making sure that drug users are fully aware of the significant risks they are running, including the harms that their use is causing to themselves and others. For those who nevertheless choose to continue with their drug use, there will be swift, certain and meaningful consequences which will be felt more strongly than today and will escalate for those who continue to offend. Drugs are harmful to society and no one is above the law. We will also step up activity aimed at protecting vulnerable children and young people so that they are less likely to start taking drugs.

From harm to hope page 46

The strategy breaks demand reduction down into three separate objectives:

• Building a world-leading evidence base 
• Reducing the demand for drugs among adults 
• Preventing the onset of drug use among children and young people

Reducing demand amongst adults

This is the section which generated much of the media with its tabloid-focused language: “The strategy is unashamedly clear on our position: illegal drug use is wrong and unlawful possession of controlled drugs is a crime”.

• A “bold, new approach” will promote:
• The introduction or expansion of tough out-of-court disposals.
• A re-introduction of test on arrest.
• The piloting of substance misuse problem solving courts.
• The police will also send messages to discourage drug use to drug dealers’ customers via any seized phones.

The strategy also promises a White Paper (“in due course”) to look at new demand reduction measures: “At this stage nothing is off the table; for repeat offenders we will explore options to change their behaviour via civil sanctions and court orders. This could include, where relevant and proportionate, curfews or the temporary removal of a passport or driving licence, measures that would escalate depending on the severity and frequency of the offences. We will also consider going further than before in fining people who break the law, including consulting on options to increase the level of fines to maximise the deterrent and dissuasion of financial penalties”.

Preventing use by children and young people

The strategy gives details about evaluating current drug education in schools before going on to talk about the Start for Life and Supporting Families programmes designed to support vulnerable families. There is also welcome news about £560m funding in the Youth Investment Fund to try to redress the massive disinvestment in youth services over the last decade.

Conclusion: The government has planned to publish annual progress reports on the implementation of the strategy so that we can judge its impact. In the next post in this series, I will focus on the structures and systems the government intends to use to implement the new strategy.

For complete article A generational shift in the demand for drugs? – Russell Webster

In both 2015 and 2016, U.S. life expectancy fell from the previous year. A single-year drop had not happened in 22 years, and two consecutive drops had not occurred in more than 50 years. This sharp reversal in the national trend toward longer lives is widely understood to be connected to the opioid epidemic that began in the 1990s. The best kept secret about the epidemic, however, is how much of it — arguably most of it — resulted from Federal policy changes initiated by both Democrats and Republicans.

Opioids include prescription drugs like oxycodone as well as illicitly manufactured drugs like heroin and fentanyl. Since 2000, the Federal government has increased subsidies on both types of opioids and cut taxes on illicit opioids.

Regardless of whether the government increases subsidies or cuts taxes, the result is lower prices paid by the opioid consumer, making opioid addiction more affordable. The CEA’s recently released 2020 Economic Report of the President estimates that, adjusted for inflation, out-of-pocket prices for prescription opioids fell by a factor of five between 2001 and 2010. (CEA’s price data is graphed below.) More recently, the quality-adjusted price of illicit opioids fell by at least a factor of two.

Studies have shown that opioids and other addictive substances obey the law of demand: lower prices mean more demand. If nothing else, the reduced prices for opioids have sharply increased the number of people who can afford an opioid addiction. CEA estimates that lower prescription opioid prices explain 31 to 83 percent of the increase in the death rate from 2001 to 2010 involving prescription opioids. This estimate does not include the additional effects of subsidies for benzos or hospitals, or the effects of reduced heroin prices since 2010.

Without the new subsidies supporting opioid addiction, the number of fatalities from opioid overdoses would be significantly lower, and maybe it wouldn’t even be called an “epidemic.”

Casey B. Mulligan, former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers (2018-2019) and a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is the author of The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy.

For complete article go to How the Government Subsidized Our Opioid Addiction | Economics21

A forgotten (but not gone) approach to drug addiction recovery may yield results today.

Not forgotten, just unobserved, or worse, ignored.

Therapeutic Community models didn’t start with Synanon (though they were in the seminal space) but did get both famous and then infamous in their lifespan — thus the noticeable profile

Synanon failed for a number of disturbing reasons, very much including its own self-sabotaging sub-cultural issues. What it did do was predict what we are now seeing in many large cities run by pro-drug or Harm Reduction only advocates, where personal agency, responsibility, and the very humanity these entail, is allowed to ebb away and the inevitable drug ghetto’s grow.

This is not the fault of ‘conservative’ or ‘institutionalization’ values; No, this the result of a meaninglessness that denies a sound anthropological context that enables sustainable purpose, relationship and the healthy activities needed for these to flourish. In their stead we get what the founder of Synanon predicted decades ago.

Synanon, Dederich proclaimed, would promote “a lifestyle that makes possible the kind of communication between people that must exist if we are to prevent this planet from turning into uninhabitable ghettos.”

Again, the model of Therapeutic Communities was not invented by Synanon, nor did they die with them.

Such communities in various customized iterations are thriving and growing actively on both large and small scales, such as…

• Betel International
• San Patrignano
• One80TC
• WHOS

Smaller scales like

• Transformations
• Fresh Start
• Oxford House
• Sherwood Cliffs

As Synanon made communalism a form of therapy, the group reinvented institutions like education, work, marriage, child-rearing and leisure. At its best, it was a place where recovering addicts did not have to choose between the pursuit of sobriety and the fullness of life. Some brought their families into Synanon or started new ones. They trained as lawyers, accountants, artists, carpenters, salespeople, truck drivers and more. They experimented with new social, political and economic structures for governing their community.

For more A forgotten approach to drug addiction recovery may yield results today – The Washington Post