Libertarian Vegan

Last Friday, Texas Congressman Ron Paul appeared on Larry King Live to debate actor Stephen Baldwin over whether or not to legalize marijuana.  At least it was supposed to be a debate; instead it turned into Ron Paul lecturing Baldwin, leaving the actor without an argument to stand on.

Baldwin began his opening statements by pointing out he had been in the classic films Biodome and Half-Baked, and saying due to those roles it may seem strange that he would appear to defend the prohibition of marijuana from a “faith-based conservative view.”  (Apparently I missed when he was born again…)

He is able to say little else during the debate, but has time to use the nonsensical gateway drug argument.  Baldwin stated, “Marijuana leads to doing worse things, that’s just a fact, I don’t care what anybody says…”  No, no you don’t.

Paul absolutely owns Baldwin, leading to Baldwin’s attempt to discredit Paul at the end, asking, “Do you think there’s alot of marijuna-smoking Ron Paul supporters?” Hilarious.

Paul - “To me it’s an issue of freedom of choice.”  Amen.

In a laughable editorial in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, John Walter, ex-drug czar under George W. Bush, says that drug prohibition policies actually help to increase personal freedom by keeping us safe from “bad” drugs that steal our freedoms from us.

He begins:

Since 2001 the number of young people using illegal drugs has dropped by 900,000 to about 2.7 million. This drop is an important development for all the obvious reasons, plus one. Substance abuse is a disease. Until recently, we failed to grasp the nature of this disease and how to reduce the suffering it causes….We did not understand how this disease could alter personality and steal individual freedom. We have paid a high price for this confusion.

In fact, it is Mr. Walters who is confused.  First of all, if one is to truly be a free individual, one has the right to do absolutely anything they want to themselves.

However, more important for the discussion here is that substance abuse is not a disease, but rather a behavior.  Without a doubt, substance abuse can lead to diseases (any many other horrible things), but the act of using drugs is not and cannot be a disease.

Real diseases are diagnosed through the use of BOTH symptoms and signs.  Symptoms are subjective complaints, normally reported by the patient.  Signs are objective, empirically and physically verifiable.  Basically, they are something you can see.  Both signs and symptoms are primarily used to identify and treat disease.

Taking this into account, then, let’s look at alcoholism, which is generally considered to be a disease. (The disease model of drug addiction began as a way to describe heavy drinking and was then applied to all other drugs) How is it diagnosed?   John Hopkins University Hospital uses the following checklist:

If you answered ‘yes’ to three or more, you are said to be definitely an alcoholic.  There was a period of my life when I would have said ‘yes’ to about 15 of these questions.  Does that mean I had a disease?  Of course not.  Did I have a problem? Certainly. When society is tells you that your behaviors constitute a ‘disease’ which makes you unable to control your behaviors, it makes it extremely easy to justify your actions and absolve yourself of responsibility - “It’s not my fault, I can’t help it, I have a disease.”

Thankfully for me I had the luck of meeting and studying under Dr. Jeffrey Schaler.  Let me quote him on this subject from his book, Addiction is a Choice:

The putative disease called addiction is diagnosed solely by symptoms in the form of conduct, never by signs, that is, by physical evidence in the patient’s body. (A doctor might conclude that someone with cirrhosis of the liver and other bodily signs had partaken of alcoholic beverages heavily over a long period, and might infer that the patient was an ‘alcoholic’, but actually the doctor would be unable to distinguish this from the hypothetical case of someone who had been kept a prisoner and dosed with alcohol against her will.  So, again, strictly speaking, there cannot possibly be a bodily sign of an addiction.) pg 16-17

This was revolutionary to me and made complete logical sense.  Changing one’s behavior can be one of the hardest things in the world, but it is in the hands of the individual.  When you are told you can’t control yourself because you have a disease, there is no reason to even try to change your actions, you “can’t.”

So how is alcoholism successfully “treated”?  The most popular method is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), born out of the Temperance movement.  AA is a strictly moral and religious system - not medical. Read the 12 steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Is there any doubt this is a spiritual program?

Returning to Walters’ editorial, he states, “roughly one in 10 of the more than 100 million Americans who drink each month suffer from alcoholism “- so then, what does that really mean?  They can answer ‘yes’ to three or more questions on the John Hopkins questionnaire?  No wonder the war on drugs is so fatally flawed when it is based on foundations such as this.

The answer lies not in legislation, but in ourselves.  As Schaler concludes:

I believe that people choose to addict themselves to drugs mainly because of unhappiness due to their problems-in-living.  Many of these problems-in-living arise because people will not muster up the courage to do what needs to be done.  They use drugs and get into negative addictions because they kid themselves that they can somehow solve problems by deadening themselves to those problems…

 Watch The Wizard of Oz, the original version with Judy Garland.  Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion all symbolize parts of you.  You’re suffering, in part, because you imagine there’s a wizard out there who is eventually going to give you what you think you need - a home, a brain, a heart, and courage.  That’s all a myth….

Sources: Wall Street Journal - Drug Legalization isn’t the Answer March 6, 2009

Schaler, Jeffrey A. Addiction is a Choice. Open Court, 2002.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was up in arms on Saturday over a U.S. report on narcotics, declaring Obama’s drug policies are no different than Bush’s.

The report, released by the U.S. Department of State on Friday, said “Geography, corruption, a weak judicial system, incompetent and in some cases complicit security forces, and lack of international counternarcotics cooperation make (Venezuela) vulnerable to illicit drug transshipments.”

On Saturday, an angry Chavez offered his rebuttal in a speech:

Is there a new government in the United States or is it Bush still in power? Obama seems to be a continuation of the Bush era. But it doesn’t matter to me. Regardless of US imperialism, this revolution will continue its course.

The Obama administration has again attacked Venezuela. He said that Venezuela and I, even citing my name, do not cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking. The country that most supports drug trafficking on this planet is the United States.

The United States is the world’s leading consumer of drugs. Why can’t they stop drugs from coming into their country? Obama, you take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine. Don’t mess with me, Mr Obama.

While I certainly don’t have any desire to defend a wannabe dictator such as Chavez, he is right that U.S. drug enforcement efforts in other countries is an imperialistic act.  We have no place there and certainly should not be spending any taxpayer money for such an undertaking.  Not to mention (as I’ve said here many times) that it is unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

Meanwhile, at a recent World Economic Forum, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the United States about its slide towards socialism.

He tried to explain to the U.S. that  “Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence” is a “mistake.” Putin went on to remind that state control of the Soviet economy made the nation “totally uncompetitive.”

When the leader of the former USSR warns you not to “turn a blind eye to the spirit of free enterprise,” perhaps it is time to reevaluate your economic policy.

Sources: AFP - Chavez says Obama same as Bush on drug war February 28, 2009

Common Sense - Ears Burning February 25, 2009

Epping, New Hampshire policeman Bradley Jardis patrols the streets for drug criminals, but when he is off the clock, he speaks out against the very drug laws he enforces.  Prohibition has failed, he says, and it is time to legalize drugs.

Jardis insists that drug prohibition does more harm to society than drugs themselves - prohibition leaves dealers in control, creates a dangerous black market that leads to more crime and allows easy access to kids.  All of these arguments have been put forth by anti-drug war groups for years, but now they are becoming more prominent among the very people who have to enforce the laws.

In 2002, 5 founding members in Massachusetts created the group LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.  They now have 11,000 members in 90 countries around the world.  Jardis is one of 132 members in New Hampshire.  LEAP stresses that they are strongly against the use of drugs and state the need to educate children about the dangers of drug use.

Member Rick Van Wickler has been superintendent of the Cheshire County, New Hampshire Department of Corrections for 16 years.  He said about 13% of his inmates are nonviolent drug offenders.

“The bottom line is, this is a country that, through policies over the last 30 years, has spent over a trillion dollars to create a drug-free society. But we in law enforcement can’t find anybody who can even make believe that that’s a possibility,”Van Wickler stated.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this problem, and in the United States people are spending far too much money believing that they can.”

Just how much money is spent on drug prohibition?  On the federal level alone, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has a $14.1 billion dollar budget for 2009. In 2008 they had a budget of $13.7 billion - can anyone honestly say that $13.7 billion dollars worth of tax payer money did anything to “win” the War on Drugs?

Take the time to visit LEAP’s website.  Drug war proponents often use the argument of “you only want drugs to be legal so you can use them yourselves” against those of us who argue against prohibition.  The members of LEAP are the ones on the streets and in the jails who see firsthand the destructive nature of drug prohibition.  It makes it much more difficult to write them off.

It reminds me of Chicago Mayor William Dever, who served from 1923-27, during the height of alcohol prohibition.  He attempted strict enforcement of prohibition laws while speaking out against them.  Chicago was certainly on the front lines of prohibition, which directly led to the rise of Al Capone and the gang warfare that tore at the city.  Dever saw that this could happen only because alcohol was illegal.  However, he didn’t want to show disrespect for the law and so did what he could to enforce it.

Thankfully the city and nation woke up and ended the failed experiment of prohibition.  It is time for them to do it once again.

Source: The Union Leader - Opposing the drug laws they enforce February 21, 2009

This past week, three former Latin American presidents told the United States that their drug prohibition policies are not working, and that major drug war reform is necessary.  The ex-leaders, whose countries are on the front lines of the war on drugs, said U.S. policies have only filled prisons and increased violence.

Cesar Gaviria , former president of Colombia, said there is no meaningful debate in the U.S., explaining, “The problem today in the U.S. is that narco-trafficking is a crime and so any politician is fearful of talking about narco-trafficking or talking about policies because they will be called soft.”

Agreeing with Gaviria are former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo .  The three have created a group known as the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, in hopes of changing the debate.

These men have seen the true U.S. war on drugs, and know it has not worked.  Prohibition can never work as long as people still want drugs.  It seems silly to think of gangs fighting over alcohol, but that is precisely what prohibition of alcohol led to - it essentially created organized crime in America.  Yet when prohibition ended, these gangs lost power - thankfully for them the illegal drug market was there, allowing them to rebuild.

Also important to note is that the entire War on Drugs in unconstitutional, and therefore illegal.  At least the alcohol prohibitionists had enough respect for the Constitution to get an amendment passed.

Source: Reuters - Latin American ex-leaders urge reform of US drug war February 11, 2009 

According to an intelligence estimate from the Justice Department, Mexican drug trafficking operations have been increasing in the D.C./Baltimore area and will only continue to rise. The JD has called Mexican drug syndicates the greatest organized crime threat to the U.S.

The estimate, known as the 2008 Drug Market Analysis for the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), comes courtesy of the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center .  It says that Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) transport and distribute most of the marijuana and methamphetamine for the area, and are becoming involved with cocaine and heroin.

The report states, “Mexican DTOs and criminal groups are the primary wholesale distributors of commercial-grade marijuana in the W/B HIDTA region, while Vietnamese criminal groups with ties to Asian DTOs in Canada have emerged as the principal distributors
of high-potency marijuana in the region.”  Officials say the threat is not new, but should still be taken as a serious public safety concern.

Having spent three years in college in D.C . just a few years back, I can say that anything you wanted was readily available - as it is with pretty much any major city in the United States.  As long as you have a demand, there will be someone there to fill the supply.  For any number of reasons, people always have and always will desire to use drugs.  If you are a free individual, shouldn’t you be able to put whatever you want in your body?

Ask most people if we should continue to prohibit drugs (well, only the ones we deem as “bad”), and they will say “Of course” and ridicule the notion of a free market, or even a well regulated one.  Ask the same people if prohibition of alcohol worked, and they will say “Of course not,” but they fail to see the connection.

For fiscal year 2009, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has a budget of over $14 billion dollars.  This is an absolute waste.  Do the drug warriors actually believe that this war has accomplished anything positive?  They regularly point to terrorists being funded by drug money, but it is the prohibition of drugs that raises prices to astronomical levels.  If they were legal, terrorists could never make the money off of drugs that they do now.

There was a fantastically absurd commercial from the ONDCP some years back which essentially told Johnny and Mary that by purchasing marijuana they were funding terrorists.  (If anyone can find this online, please let me know, my search ended in failure.)  This is exactly the same time of silly propaganda of “Reefer Madness.”   Somehow the billions the U.S. government spent over the years propping up dictatorial regimes is not terrorism, but my purchase of pot is.  Go figure.

One final point - the entire war on drugs is unconstitutional.  At least the alcohol prohibitionists back in the day knew that in order to wage their war, they needed a Constitutional amendment.

Source: CNS News - Mexican Drug Traffickers  Increasing Operations in D.C. Area, Says Intel Assessment January 23, 2009