Category — Tax and Regulate

Marijuana use by 8^th, 10^th and 12^th grade students increased in 2010, with more American teenagers now using marijuana than cigarettes for the second year in a row, according to numbers released today by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan as part of the annual Monitoring the Future survey. In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the last 30 days, while 19.2 had used cigarettes.

“It’s really no surprise that more American teenagers are using marijuana and continue to say it’s easy to get. Our government has spent decades refusing to regulate marijuana in order to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers who aren’t required to check customer ID and have no qualms about selling marijuana to young people,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “The continued decline in teen tobacco use is proof that sensible regulations, coupled with honest, and science-based public education can be effective in keeping substances away from young people. It’s time we acknowledge that our current marijuana laws have utterly failed to accomplish one of their primary objectives – to keep marijuana away from young people – and do the right thing by regulating marijuana, bringing its sale under the rule of law, and working to reduce the unfettered access to marijuana our broken laws have given teenagers.”

Since the survey’s inception, overwhelmingly numbers of American teenagers have said marijuana was easy for them to obtain. According to the 2010 numbers, the use of alcohol – which is also regulated and sold by licensed merchants required to check customer ID – continued to decline among high school seniors.

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The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass a resolution today declaring illegal marijuana cultivation on federal lands to be an “unacceptable threat to the safety of law enforcement and the public,” and calling upon the nation’s drug czar “to work in conjunction with Federal and State agencies to develop a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to permanently dismantle Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating on Federal lands.”

Speaking on the House floor yesterday, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) agreed with the goals of H. Res. 1540, but said the only way to accomplish such objectives would be to eliminate “the failed policy of prohibition with regard to marijuana and replac[e] it with regulation.”

“I have no doubt that marijuana plantations, as the resolution states, pose a threat to the environmental health of Federal lands, that drug traffickers spray unregulated chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers, but I submit that the best way to address that is to incorporate this into a meaningful and enforceable agricultural policy for the country with regard to the regulatory structure for the production of marijuana,” said Polis, whose home state of Colorado has emerged as a national leader in the regulation of medical marijuana. “… As long as [marijuana] remains illegal and as long as there is a market demand, the production will be driven underground. No matter how much we throw at enforcement, it will continue to be a threat not only to our Federal lands, but to our border security and to our safety within our country.”

Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, today joined Rep. Polis in endorsing the underlying rationale of the resolution and suggesting that accomplishing the goals detailed in legislation will require an entirely new strategy by the federal government.

“Passage of this resolution will send a clear message to the drug czar and others that our current strategies for combating illegal marijuana production are not working and that a new direction is needed,” Fox said. “There are two choices here: continue the failed prohibitionist policies that encourage Mexican drug cartels to keep growing marijuana on federal lands, or embrace a new path that would acknowledge the reality that marijuana is not going away, but its production and sale can be sensibly regulated in order to reduce the harm caused by its illicit production on federal lands.”

UPDATE: The bill passed overwhelmingly yesterday, with the only “no” votes being cast by Reps. Polis, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko — who, as we’ve discussed in a previous post, receives hundreds of thousands of federal dollars annually to pursue eradication efforts — told the Redding Record-Searchlight that the vote “sends a very clear message that Congress recognizes the impact and the problems with illegal marijuana growing and dangers on public lands.”

But unless Congress and the drug czar’s office agree to consider regulating marijuana in order to shut down its illicit production, there’s little chance all this chest-thumping will lead to any new, more effective strategies. In the perceptive words of Scott Morgan, “If you don’t want Mexican gangsters growing marijuana in the woods, then it’s time to allow people who aren’t Mexican gangsters to grow marijuana somewhere that isn’t the woods.”

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Some reassuring words of wisdom from Washington state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D), who tells The Stranger that she intends to introduce a bill to tax and regulate marijuana in next year’s legislature:

“We would legalize it, regulate it, and tax it,” she says. “I am serious. We have been wasting scores of millions of dollars on arresting and jailing people who have done nothing more than smoke marijuana recreationally. That has ended up harming people and costing taxpayers tremendously. So it’s a very high cost to individuals and to taxpayers—it’s a wrongheaded policy that simply needs to be changed. People need to stick their neck out and say enough already and people are starting to do that. You will see that we will have a very good sponsor [for a companion bill to legalize marijuana] in the senate, someone who is very well respected. I am dead serious about this.”

Dickerson also points to a recent poll showing support for treating marijuana like alcohol at 54 percent among Washington voters. “If [the legislature doesn't] pass it this year, there’s a possibility we will take our case to the people in the initiative process in 2012,” she says.

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Back in May, the Associated Press published the first piece in a groundbreaking series concluding that, after 40 years and more than $1 trillion spent, America’s war on drugs “has failed to meet any of its goals.” Today, as part of the same series, the AP looks specifically at U.S. enforcement strategy toward drug cartels in Mexico, and concludes that even record-level arrests and seizures have failed absolutely to curb the power of the violent gangs that control vast swaths of northern Mexico and make billions by selling drugs, particularly marijuana, to the illicit U.S. market.

Boiled down, it’s a damning indictment of prohibition – and more importantly, the assumption that if we just arrest enough people, and seize enough drugs, then these bloodthirsty, increasingly powerful cartels will somehow just go away.

Citing just one example, a major DEA operation that arrested 761 members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and seized 23 tons of narcotics, the AP quotes acting Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart, as declaring: “Today we have dealt the Sinaloa drug cartel a crushing blow.”

But just how crushing was it? An Associated Press investigation casts doubt on whether the crackdown caused any significant setback for the cartel. It still ranks near the top of Mexico’s drug gangs, and most of those arrested were underlings who had little connection to the cartel and were swiftly replaced. The cartel leader remains free, along with his top commanders.

The findings confirm what many critics of the drug war have said for years: The government is quick to boast about large arrests or drug seizures, but many of its most-publicized efforts result in little, if any, slowdown in the drug trade.

When confronted by the AP with the fact that the current U.S. enforcement strategy is futile, DEA Deputy Director David Gaddas insisted such tactics work, reportedly arguing, “it’s disruptive for cartels to lose their drivers, their accountants, and their money launderers.”

Yes, but aren’t the drugs they seize a fraction of those on the street, and the criminals arrested replaced or released?

Gaddas dropped his head into his hands for a moment, thinking.

“You know, we’re doing God’s work,” he replied.

I never realized that was who told the DEA how to go about its business.

All kidding aside, that’s an unbelievably lame excuse. Hardly a week goes by now without a mainstream media report of the increasing carnage in Mexico, the discovery of yet another elaborate tunnel they cartels have used to smuggle marijuana into the United States, or the political and social tension that Mexican instability and violence are causing along our southern border. If you read the entire AP article, it cites one frustrating example after another.

And the DEA sits there and claims – despite mountains of evidence to the contrary – that its strategy is working.

Thankfully, a major news organization like the AP has now – finally – read the writing on the wall and spelled it out with meticulous detail: current U.S. drug policy does not work. It does not reduce crime, does not reduce use, does not reduce availability, does not weaken major drug traffickers.

So what should we do instead? How else can we strike a blow against these murderous cartel thugs?

Well, according to former Mexico presidents, leading Mexican intellectuals, a sitting U.S. federal judge, a former U.S. border governor, and many others, the single most effective thing the U.S. could do would be to remove marijuana from the criminal market, and tax and regulate it like alcohol. Deny the cartels their most lucrative product, and make border cops spend their time on more worthwhile activities than arresting Willie Nelson.

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The DEA announced today that it will temporarily classify five synthetic chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana as Schedule 1 drugs, meaning they have no medical value, a high potential for abuse, and will be illegal to sell, purchase, or use. (Marijuana itself, as many of us are already well aware, is also classified as a Schedule 1 drug).

The move comes after more than a dozen states nationwide have passed bans on the herbal blends, which go by names such as “Spice” and “K2,” and — while advertised as “not for human consumption” — were sold in smoke shops around the country and used by customers as a legal alternative to marijuana. The products generally do not show up on drug tests, but there have been various reports of them causing adverse health effects, including accelerated heart rates, increased blood pressure, and several documented trips to the emergency room.

As I have argued before, the prevalence of these substances is simply another unintended consequence of the government’s irrational prohibition on natural, whole-plant marijuana, which comes with none of the side effects attributed to these chemical knock-offs. The DEA’s ban on the five synthetic versions could take effect in 30 days and last for at least a year, but as I’ve said before, the bans on fake marijuana will ultimately be as ineffective as the ban on real marijuana (used by 17 million Americans monthly, despite its Schedule 1 status) and could lead users and suppliers to begin experimenting with other, possibly more dangerous synthetic variants that mimic marijuana’s effects. [Read more →]

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