With economy failing, what "hope" is there for Obama if his slogans "Change" and "Forward" are contradicted by his policies, e.g. medical marijuana?

Page one, June 2, 2012, pick your newspaper: "Weak jobs report." "U.S. unemployment edges up to 8.2%." "Grim Jobs Report Sinks Markets" "JOB GROWTH WEAK FOR THIRD MONTH, AS RECOVERY LAGS"

The economy is NOT recovering; not good for re-electing the incumbent, Obama.
The most recent Gallup Poll shows Obama and Romney are tied. The conventional wisdom is that Obama must double down on the economy as his defining message to win.

However, it may be even more critical for Obama to capture voters for whom issues other than the economy are primary.

For the critical group of voters, age 65 and older, Romney is ahead 14 points. As we all know, they vote.

For the retired, unemployment numbers may not be as important as the number of pills they take for their aches and pains. (In my next post, I will discuss Robert Platshorn and The Silver Tour!, subtitled, "Teaching Seniors The Benefits of Medical Marijuana," featured on page one of the Wall Street Journal!)

Recently I said to a Capitol Hill analyst, "Given his political vulnerability, why doesn't Obama support medical marijuana when it is so politically popular in all demographics?"
Reply, "Obama really isn't that flexible about change!" She's right, I realized.

To the extent that Obama becomes seen as conservative and reluctant to change, Obama looks like a deeply "cynical cat" for having run in 2008 on the slogans "Change we can believe in" and "Hope and Change."

Could advocates for medical marijuana make Obama's stance on medical marijuana emblematic of core personal resistance to change? If so, does this expose Obama's campaign persona as a fraud? If so, Obama's re-election becomes much more problematic!

One of the questions regularly asked in a poll for the Associated Press is "Does President Obama care about people like you?" The possible answers are "very well," "somewhat well," "slightly well," "not at all," and "unsure."

When Obama was sworn in, 53 % said very well, 26% said somewhat well, 7% said slightly well, 12% said not at all, and 2% were unsure. The percentage answering very well fell by January 2010 to 41%. 24% said somewhat well, 7% said slightly well, and not at all more than doubled to 27%, with 2% unsure. In December 2011, the percentage saying Obama cares about people like you fell to its lowest, 32% very well, 22% somewhat well, 11% slightly well, and 36% not at all, and none unsure. By February 2012, there was slight improvement: 36% very well, 21% somewhat well, 7% slightly well, 34% not at all, and 1% unsure.

Can medical marijuana advocates convert the overwhelming public support for medical marijuana into a criterion for a person to consider whether the President cares about people like you? Could they mobilize social media, influence popular mass entertainment from Saturday Night Live to David Letterman, Conan, and Bill Maher, and create or inspire YouTube videos to carry the message that being a supporter of medical marijuana means caring for the sick, the elderly and the dying? If so, they could drive down the President's numbers.

Thus to the extent that Obama is portrayed and come to be perceived to be a hypocrite on "Change" or personally indifferent to the suffering of "people like me," those who are trying to push Obama's resistance to medical marijuana into the national discourse may succeed in making it a policy issue he continues ignore at his political peril.

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Democrats worried about medical marijuana? Pelosi's statement first in 7 years; new MPP Poll; OR AG race

A survey by the Mason-Dixon polling organization, commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), found overwhelming and across the board rejection of the Obama Justice Department's attack upon state medical marijuana programs. Every demographic -- Independents, Republicans, Democrats, senior citizens, parents, young voters, white, black and Hispanic -- overwhelmingly support state medical marijuana programs

On May 2, 2012, the Democratic Party's biggest fundraiser, Nancy Pelosi, issued a statement criticizing the Justice Department policy on medical marijuana. This was her first official statement in SEVEN years on medical marijuana. It is clear that she sees an urgency about this issue that has not existed for Democrats before.

On May 15, the results of the Oregon Democratic Primary for Attorney General resulted in the victory of Ellen Rosenblum, the candidate supporting medical marijuana, getting 64 percent of the vote over the prosecutor who condemned medical marijuana.

This is a significant issue for most Americans! Millions of Americans have cancer. Millions more think every persistent pain may be cancer. But Mitt Romney rebuffed a question from a Denver TV reporter on medical marijuana as not an "issue of significance" in a recent interview on the CBS affiliate.

Medical marijuana is sure an "issue of significance" to a New York state judge who revealed on the op-ed page of The New York Times on May 17 that he is using marijuana to fight his life threatening pancreatic cancer -- in violation of the law.

This is an "issue of significance" and Obama is not demonstrating the political skills that enabled him to outmaneuver Hilary Clinton in 2008.

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Mr. President: Free Clarence Aaron

Dafna Linzer of ProPublica has another bomb-shell investigative report on the front page of The Washington Post, May 14, 2012, headlined: "Inmate still in prison after facts kept from Bush team."
Records reviewed by Linzer reveal that the Pardon Attorney, Ronald Rogers, "left out critical information" in recommending to the Bush White House that Clarence Aaron should not receive a commutation of sentence.

Clarence Aaron turned 43-years old on May 9, 2012. At age 24 he had been sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment for his role in a crack cocaine transaction. His story was first made public in 1999 in the award-winning documentary by film maker Ofra Bikel -- "Snitch" on PBS Frontline.

The article reports that a Bush White House counsel, Kenneth Lee, "was aghast when ProPublica provided him with original statements from the judge and prosecutor to compare with [pardon attorney] Rodgers' summary [of their statements that were furnished to the White House]. Had he read the statements at the time, Lee said, he would have urged Bush to commute Aaron's sentence."

President Obama should order Clarence Aaron's sentence commuted this week.

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Obama doesn't get it > Rolling Stone interview

Obama is interviewed in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
His comments about medical marijuana are absurd:

Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not "use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana." Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What's up with that?
Here's what's up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law. I can't ask the Justice Department to say, "Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books." What I can say is, "Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage." As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.

The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, "This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way." That's not something we're going to do. I do think it's important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we've done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We've had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that's an appropriate debate that we should have.

Obama is completely dodging here. He is blaming legislation for having let his Justice Department get out of control. This "large scale commercial operations" is a red herring. How did he think that hundreds of thousands of patients would get their medication. It is outrageous that more people are now dying from prescription drugs than are killed in automobile accidents each year. Yet DEA is doing almost nothing to investigate the large corporations that manufacture and distribute these drugs, other than bust a pharmacist here or there. They have challenged some minor parts of a couple of retail drug companies.

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Cuts in the Obama anti-drug budget under sequestration

Brad Schlesinger writing at examiner.com has the scoop on John Carnevale's analysis of December 2011 on the Federal anti-drug budget for FY 2012 if the broad cuts take effect that Congress ordered in the event Deficit Supercommittee reached no agreement. (And you recall there was no agreement.)

Relying on highly experienced assumptions about the federal budget process, Carnevale's fear is that prevention will get much bigger cuts ( -40%) than interdiction ( -6%). Treatment could be cut by - 16%, domestic law enforcement by -18% and international programs by -21%. These are guesses, just informed guesses.

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Obama again ducks questions on marijuana from American Internet public

Once again the President invites the public to submit questions to him and vote on the most urgent or important ones for him to answer in a live YouTube interview. Once again questions regarding marijuana legalization, the costs of marijuana prisoners, the use of marijuana in medicine, hemp, marijuana and taxes, marijuana and the economy, etc. received far more votes than any other topic. This question from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition was the second highest vote getter.
And once again the President's handlers make sure that the questions are not asked! Indeed, the White House deleted a question from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Open White House? Pathetic!

UPDATE:
John McWorter at the New York Daily News blasts Google and YouTube for not asking about marijuana, noting that New York City Police are making over 50,000 marijuana arrests per year -- even though marijuana possession was decriminalized as a violation with a maximum $100 fine in 1977.

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Major New U.S. Efforts in Mexico -- Intelligence drones

The U.S. is flying intelligence gathering drones over Mexico, wiretapping Mexican suspects, and U.S. agents are carrying weapons contrary to official Mexican policy, The New York Times confirmed in a report March 16.

Yet U.S. agencies are not cooperating with each other - a chronic issue that is 40 years old -- but the DEA has time and resources to raid dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries in Montana and California.

Perhaps this is part of the public relations of the Obama Administration making up to Mexico's President Calderon who was humiliated by
leaked U.S. State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

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Obama courts young voters, again

The Washington Post has a long front-page story on March 14 on Obama's campaign to reignite the 2008 enthusiasm of students.

Reading the account leaves me shaking my head at the utterly canned and insincere nature of this project. It is an echo of so many of his political and policy blunders that have driven his popularity down.

From what I hear, the Administration has been surprisingly out of touch with young people on a host of issues.

Regarding drug policy, for example, the President muffed questions on marijuana in on-line forums. In March 2009, he mocked the questioners on the subject, and with no follow-up in two years, they evidently abandoned the White House Internet question format altogether at www.whitehouse.gov. That's got to be real impressive to young people.

Medical marijuana policy is a confusing hash offering no guidance to states for effective regulation. 15 state legalize medical marijuana and the Administration position is where it was in the FIRST Bush Administration -- no such thing as medical use. Dr. Lyle Craker at U Mass has still been denied DEA registration to grow research grade marijuana that could lead to standardized marijuana essential for pharmacy distribution, after more than 10 years.

Obama's nomination of Michelle Leonhart to head DEA is another example of unimaginative, passionless, indifferent policy-making. Leonhart, the leading bureaucratic enemy of medical marijuana, is the last person he should have picked if he wanted a coherent policy that reflected both the science and the popular will. After all, in 2008, medical marijuana got a higher percentage of the vote in Michigan than he did!

The crack cocaine reform signed in August by Obama is ignored and frustrated by prosecutors at sentencing. Sadly, the White House and Attorney General do not really direct the Justice Department where appropriate policy making should be made.

On using his Constitutional power of pardon and reprieve to correct injustices, Obama's callous indifference to patently unjust sentences is appalling. Consider Clarence Aaron, serving three life sentences concurrently, for being a courier for a Mobile, AL crack gang. He was a college student at the time, with no record, and received about $1500 for his role. The leaders of the gang, with prior records, all cut deals and have been free for years.

His White House "drug czar" is patently clueless in his speeches and comments His insistence that there is no longer a war on drugs -- because he said so in 2009 -- typifies his adherence to talking points in lieu of thoughtful discourse. Read what On columnist present at The Seattle Times said about his highly anticipated recent editorial board meeting there: "Kerlikowske's evasive, canned answers and lack of force made this a regular editorial board meeting. . . Really, even when pressed, he did not say much of anything."

Sadly, that says it all regarding the Obama White House on one issue that is important to young people.

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LEAP asks Obama if "We do big things" on drug policy

Retired Deputy Sheriff McKenzie Allen (Los Angeles County, CA, and King County, WA), a LEAP member, addresses the President in 30 seconds on YouTube to ask if he will consider studying legalization, regulation and control of drugs to reduce violence and save lives.

The President is taking questions from the public such as this to be addressed on Jan. 27, 2011 at 2:30 p.m. EST to be streamed live on youTube. Mr. Allen's video received more votes than any other submitted question in on-line voting.

LEAP is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Tom Angell, Media Director for LEAP, notes that President Obama has treated previous questions along these lines as a joke. LEAP Executive Director, retired Maryland State Police Major Neill Franklin, noting that close friends of his have been murdered while investigating drug cases, says this is "not a laughing matter, and the president should not treat it as such."

Tune in and see if the White House and the President, when it comes to fixing our failed drug policy, is able to say "We Do Big Things!"

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White House suggests Obama backs Leonhart- but doesn't get it

The Daily Caller reported August 18,2010 that the White House is sticking with the nomination of Michelle Leonhart, who has been the Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration since 2007, and Deputy Administrator (the No. 2) since 2003. A few weeks ago, numerous groups called for the President to withdraw her nomination.

The story in the Daily Caller, however, has mis-analyzed why she is wrong for the job. It is not simply that she has overseen DEA while it has conducted raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers in the past year, in apparent disregard of the October 19, 2009 memorandum from Deputy Attorney General David Ogden.

The bigger issue is that Leonhart has demonstrated that she is unable and unwilling to take on the major job of the next DEA Administrator, which is to work with the states in developing medical marijuana laws that make sense. During her entire career in DEA management -- since 1997 -- she has acted as though the calendar were stuck on October 1996 -- before the medical marijuana law that passed in November 1996 and received one million votes more than Bill Clinton did. Her leadership of DEA has ignored the medical marijuana laws passed in state after state after state, and ignored the hundreds of scientific studies conducted that establish the various medical benefits of marijuana.

On the key challenge that the DEA has to address going forward, she is utterly unqualified. That the Obama Administration does not recognize this is very disturbing.

I suspect that what compelled Obama to pick Leonhart is that he could not find anyone competent who was willing to take the lead in reforming an antiquated agency staffed with zealots committed to a hopeless mission. The rumor in D.C. is that everyone they asked turned down the offer.

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Thoughts on a "victory"

This morning at 11 a.m., President Obama signed S. 1789, the Fairness in Sentencing Act, in the Oval Office, reported by The Caucus blog at The New York Times. The House passed the bill on July 28 on a voice vote. I have been working for a bill on this subject since 1993.

This bill raises the quantities of crack cocaine that trigger the mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking enacted in 1986 (from 5 grams to 28 grams and from 50 grams to 280 grams) creating a ratio of cocaine to crack of 18 to 1 instead of 100 to 1. The Act also repeals a mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of 5 grams of crack or more -- enacted in 1988, provides various directives to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding drug sentencing, calls for a review of the effectiveness of drug courts, and raises the fines that can be imposed for the crime of drug trafficking.

In 1986, I was counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and played a key role in the creation of that law. A person who is convicted of distributing (or is part of a conspiracy to distribute) at least 500 grams of powder cocaine (a little more than a pound) or 5 grams of crack cocaine (a very small amount -- the weight of 5 packs of artificial sweetener or one nickel must be sentenced to at least 5 years (up to 40 years) in Federal prison. A person who is convicted of distributing (or is part of a conspiracy to distribute) at least 5000 grams (5 kilograms or about 12 pounds) of powder cocaine or 50 grams of crack cocaine (the weight of a typical candy bar) must be sentenced to at least 10 years (up to life imprisonment) in Federal prison. These sentences are triggered by different quantities for other drugs -- all relatively small quantities. In 1986, the federal prisons held 36,000 prisoners. This week there are over 211,000 federal prisoners, more than half of them there on drug charges, and a large fraction serving unjustly long sentences. Over 70 percent of the prisoners are serving sentences longer than 5 years.

The quantities that trigger mandatory sentences are mistakenly small. Contrary to the intent of Congress, they do not indicate that a trafficker is a major drug trafficker. A major cocaine trafficker organizes transactions in hundreds and thousands of kilos. One thousand kilos is one metric ton, which equals one million grams. The U.S. consumes about 300 metric tons of cocaine annually.

Unfortunately, year after year about 80 percent of the federal crack cocaine defendants are African-American. About 8 or 9 percent of the defendants are white. The racial disproportionality is utterly unwarranted.

Perhaps just as scandalous is that most federal drug defendants are neighborhood-level dealers, not the national level or international level dealers who should be the primary target of federal drug enforcement efforts. If most federal drug convicts were trafficking in hundreds or thousands of kilos, and operating at a very high level, no one would concerned about their race or ethnicity.

I have been working to repeal or reform the mandatory minimums I helped write since I left the Judiciary Committee in January 1989. I helped found Families Against Mandatory Minimums in 1991. In 1993, I wrote a draft of legislation to eliminate separate crack cocaine quantities so that at least crack and powder would be equal at the 500 and 5000 gram levels that was introduced by U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), the former Chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. He called the bill the "Crack Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act." With that title, I thought it would never pass, and it never did.

Beginning in 2005, the Open Society Policy Center assembled a coalition that I joined along with Drug Policy Alliance, the ACLU, the Sentencing Project, Families Against Mandatory Minimum Sentences, the Methodist General Board of Church and Society, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and many other groups including SSDP and LEAP, to push Congress to end the crack - powder disparity. For the coalition I drafted a bill I called the "Cocaine Kingpin Punishment Act" which eliminated the crack provisions and raised the fines that could be imposed against convicted traffickers.

In 2007, Sen. Joe Biden introduced a bill, S. 1711, with "cocaine kingpin" in the title and included some of the provisions of my draft. Senators Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton cosponsored his bill. There was a day of hearings on the bill, but no action. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee introduced a companion bill in the House.

In 2009, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced a revision of the Biden bill, now called the Fairness in Sentencing Act. He worked with Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who had expressed concern about the racial disparity in cocaine prosecutions, and what Sen. Hatch referred to as the "girl friend problem" of sentencing co-conspirators like principals. With Sessions and Hatch, Durbin was able to reach the compromise on 28 and 280 grams (18 to 1) and get it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and out of the Senate on a voice vote.

I was very pessimistic that the House Democratic Leadership would bring the bill to the floor and risk a recorded vote. But House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) worked to get it to the floor. I believed that House Republicans would resist the bill as "soft on drugs," as Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, argued on the floor.

But I was wrong. The bill was brought to the floor, and Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Dan Lungren (R-CA) supported the bill. There was no record vote.

Since I did not think the bill would pass, and it did, my thoughts are that this is the best our political system can produce right now.

Republican support creates a political opening for President Obama to begin to issue orders commuting some sentences that are especially unjust -- if the Pardon Attorneys office is reorganized and expanded.

Ideally the Justice Department will begin more careful oversight of U.S. Attorney offices to assure that they focus on high level cases.

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Thoughts from a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border -- fixing the violence?

Eric L. Olson, a very distinguished American analyst at the Mexico Institute at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has just issued a ten-page report on his recent trip to the borderlands.

This balanced and thoughtful report gives a very straightforward description of the crisis of violence and lack of respect for the government that prevails in Mexico -- without the hyperbole that characterized the trip report of Gen. Barry McCaffrey after his visit in December to Mexico, "fighting for survival against narco-terrorism."

The report should be read by everyone interested in what is happening in Mexico as it struggles against violence and the drug trafficking organizations.

Most Americans are probably completely unaware that Mexico is in the process of completely transforming its justice system from the Napoleonic (or inquisitorial) approach which relies upon documents to the Anglo-American-style approach with trials involving witness testimony. The challenge of re-training prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys across Mexico is profound. In Chihuahua, it lags behind Baja California.

The problems are not simply that the cartels are powerful, drugs are profitable, or the government's response is wrong. The problems are more universal: deep-seated, endemic mistrust of the government, widespread poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Some of the problems are similar to problems that face anti-crime initiatives in the United States: politicization of anti-crime initiatives, intense bureaucratic rivalries among agencies for credit and resources, and lack of cooperation across jurisdictions and the levels of local, state and federal administration, and quick fixes that attempt to employ military assets (i.e. drug interdiction), techniques (i.e., S.W.A.T. tactics and raids) or ideologies (i.e., zero tolerance).

There is nothing wrong with Olson's recommendations -- they clearly identify the general areas in which Mexico and the U.S. need to move forward. Calling first for a reduction in demand for drugs in the U.S. by increasing treatment and prevention is perfectly appropriate, if utterly predictable.

Tragically, America has reached the sorry state in which any reasonable suggestion to reduce demand by improving our ability to prevent illegal drug use and increase the availability of treatment is a cliche.

However, most states are now cutting back on drug treatment and prevention programs as they address what has been estimated to be a collective $300 billion gap between current expenditures and projected revenues that must be closed.

I believe that treatment works. Of course, not everyone who is using illegal drugs needs treatment. In simple numerical terms, most of those who use illegal drugs do not need treatment, but there is a minority who use drugs heavily or compulsively who could use treatment. Those who have committed crimes -- robbery, burglary, shoplifting, domestic violence, etc. -- who use expensive and addictive drugs can and should be compelled to abstain from drug use by using programs such as Hawai'i's Operation HOPE. There, most hard core drug users stop without treatment. They modify their behavior to avoid the inconvenience of guaranteed arrest if one of their frequent drug tests comes up positive for illegal drugs. But in most of America, probation for offenders is ineffective supervision, treatment beds insufficient, and access to treatment screwed up. In your community is there a central intake for treatment that is conveniently reached at convenient hours? If you show up for treatment, will you get a bed -- or a place at the back of the line?

Of course one can drill down into the wide variety of treatment offerings and find a mixed bag. There are plenty of poorly run programs and outright scams. But treatment works for those who are in well-run programs or who are sufficiently motivated.

Will we see more treatment? The Obama Administration is asking for $137 million more for treatment in FY 2011 compared to FY 2010. Chickenfeed! The Administration is asking for $180 million more for its enforcement programs (excluding increased federal spending on prisons, prosecutors, etc.). Not since President Richard Nixon has there been a serious high-level national commitment to providing effective drug treatment in a scale that approaches the need.

The other half of the cliche to reduce demand is for more drug abuse prevention. Most of the expenditures for dedicated drug abuse prevention "programs" are a proven waste. D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), founded by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (who famously said that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot"), was found to be worthless after numerous evaluations. D.A.R.E. revised its curriculum, but a Google search finds no new evaluations published in the past twenty years. Even D.A.R.E.'s website can only report some preliminary -- first year of a five year evaluation -- from 2003! Another bogus prevention program is the ONDCP White House Media Anti-Drug campaign. Once again, the program was found to be ineffective in scientific evaluations. But the Obama Administration is asking for almost a 50 percent increase -- from $45 million to $66.5 million. They want to throw away another $21.5 million on a program that has been proven to be ineffective.

My daughter is in her middle school health education program this quarter which includes drug abuse prevention. Last night at dinner, she told my wife and me about the program's self-esteem enhancing exercise that she and her classmates engaged in Wednesday. Go around the circle and tell the next student what you like about them. She said that everyone was embarrassed and resorted to saying vapid things like, "I like your hair. I like your blouse. I like your personality." She didn't have to tell us explicitly that she thought this was silly and pointless, her sarcasm was unmistakable.

Scholars, policy experts, commentators and politicians have been exhorting one another about the urgency and importance of reducing demand for drugs for more than thirty years. In the 1980s, successive heads of DEA would testify that more money should be spent on demand reduction. DEA even started its own demand reduction programs. America may someday get serious about demand reduction, but not in time to do anything about Mexico's violence and corruption. One could ask which will come first, a regime to regulate and control drugs (usually crudely called "legalization") or adequate and effective prevention programs and treatment capacity.

Regulation and control of the now illegal drugs will not be easy to execute, even after the political consensus adopts it. But there is little likelihood that any less radical strategy will appreciably reduce violence, other than engaging in corrupt accommodation of the drug trafficking organizations along the lines of the pre-Fox, PRI governments.

Among the obvious consequences of drug regulation and control in the U.S. is that schools and parents will have to have much more meaningful conversations with their children about drugs legally distributed. Teachers potentially can be truthful and accurate, freed of serving as propagandists in the "war on drugs" crusade. Parents will be able to speak truthfully about their experiences with drugs without the stigma of law-breaking. Drug prevention may rely less upon stigma ("Users are losers!") and more upon science and reinforcing positive behaviors.

The demand for illegal drugs that Eric L. Olson and other observers of the crisis in Mexico lament is not going to be reduced by exhortation or policy papers. The most well-meaning "drug czars," DEA Administrators, HHS and Department of Education Secretaries, Surgeon Generals, Congressional leaders and other have a thirty year record of insignificant actions. Drug use declines have been real at various times but, as factors affecting the global criminal trade, negligible.

To reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the scale that will substantially impact corruption and violence in Mexico demands that their illegal character be eliminated. When that happens, notwithstanding the repeated warnings of the International Narcotics Control Board, the global drug control regime will have more "coherence" and "effectiveness."

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Why do drug epidemics happen?

Drugs are widely available. Why do drug epidemics happen?

Michael Agar developed trend theory to answer this question. His excellent book, Dope Double Agent: The Naked Emperor on Drugs, published by Lulu Books in 2006, uses trend theory to explain the 1960s heroin epidemic, the 1980s crack epidemic and the 1990s Ecstasy epidemic.

(The book has much, much more than these three case histories. It is an enormously important, elegantly written book. It is part memoir, part expose, part cri de coeur. Dope Double Agent is a window into the official world of drug abuse policy and research. It is equally a window into drug treatment centers and to bars and shooting galleries of New York City junkies.)

An essential point of trend theory is that the idea that drug use is simply driven by demand is false. Thinking about drugs in primarily along a public health or disease model is wrong. Use does not simply spread from user to user like an infection. Drug epidemics -- periods of rapid growth in use are part of periods of rapid changes -- among user and in the two components of supply -- sources of production and in the retail networks. In thinking about drug epidemics, it is more instructive to think about drugs as products in a market.

I think his analysis makes sense. And applying his analysis to the current situation leaves me frightened. I shared my thoughts with Courtland Milloy, The Washington Post's most perceptive columnist, when it comes to substance abuse issues, and he wrote about it today.

We face the potential for an enormous drug epidemic. The global recession is going to transform economies and governments around the world. In scores of countries, the production of drugs will become attractive as traditional economic markets are blown away by changing demand. Crafts produced for tourists are worth nothing when there are no tourists. Crafts produced for gift shops in the developed world are worthless when those shops have gone out of business. Shippers and exporters unable to make a living with legal goods will apply their expertise to other products that can generate income, such as drugs. Farmers who face falling demand for their produce will consider switching to cannabis, opium or coca. Government officials, dependent upon bribes from legitimate businesses, will lose income as legitimate business shrinks. They, too, will be receptive to the income that the illegal drug trade can provide. We can reasonably anticipate a revolution in the production and global shipment of drugs.

In the United States, the recession is a growing devastation. We all see the headlines and the data. Luckily, in prior recessions, I was insulated. Even in 1976, when I knew young lawyers who were unable to get a job, I never knew anyone who lost a job. In other economic contractions, again, I do not remember that I knew anyone who was laid off. But in this recession, two close friends have been laid off, and a parent of one of my daughter's classmates lost his. This recession is hitting really hard. I don't yet know anyone who has lost their house. But the largest portion of the Washington Post's classified section are ads for home foreclosure sales.

When you are unemployed and when you are at risk of losing the home that your family lives in, your desperation is irresistible. To your conscience, the crime of illegal drug selling is easily justified. And to your wallet, the profit potential is unmistakable. The number of people who will supplement their unemployment compensation by selling drugs so that they do not become homeless is growing by leaps and bounds. To the opportunistic criminal, the challenge to organize eager potential drug sellers in a dramatic expansion of illegal drug sales awaits, if it is not already being met. The tools of texting, cell phones, and Facebook, give the creative dealers enormous opportunities to distribute drugs less ostentatiously than standing on street corners. The facts of our economic contraction are going to create a powerful incentive for persons to sell drugs to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.

The questionable morality of the bailout of the financial system that led us into this crisis erodes at resistance to breaking the drug laws. Selling drugs is just another form of capitalism. The seller is not a pusher; the buyers are eager to find the connection. A dealer can easily avoid selling to youth or obviously pregnant women.

Which is "more evil?" Selling drugs to a peer eager to get high or desperate to get right because they are dopesick in withdrawal. Or evicting a family from their home because the laid-off parents can no longer pay every dime of the mortgage. The ugly consequences of our economic collapse diminish the "ugliness" of selling drugs.

And finally, there is a growing population of despair. The hope of 2008 and the excitement that culminated on January 20 is going to fade. Our embrace of "hope" and "change" and "Yes, We Can!" was a mania. Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation, is already struggling to find the vocabulary that describes the scale of the loss of hope.

For many African-Americans, a White House inhabited by Michelle, Sasha, Malia and Barack Obama is the fulfillment of a dream of a transformed world. Essential to that dream is that each of us, individually, is a tangible beneficiary of that transformation. The reality for most people in America, and for most African-Americans, however, is that in the coming months and years things are going to get worse. Jobs will continue to be lost. Family members will become homeless. Disease will be inadequately treated, if treated at all.

Aside from the private catastrophes, the public sector is going to shrink too. Every state and city and county is cutting back.

In the foreseeable future, almost none of the poor are going to see something tangibly positive from the election of Barack Obama. Disaster is going to trickle down. Tangibly, their recreation centers and libraries will close, their classrooms will get more crowded, their streets will be dirtier, their waits at the hospital longer. Redevelopment will stop. Houses won't get painted. Abandoned homes and buildings will get broken into, and then burned, and then sit. Weeds will grow and lawns will be unmowed. Broken streetlights won't get replaced.

For thousands, indeed millions, whose hopes were on wings in 2007 and 2008 -- some money in the bank, a job, and an African-American family in the White House, -- emotional desolation is in store. For millions of Americans, their distress will be profound, and drugs will be used widely to bring their relief.

In recent months, the violence in Mexico has been a continuing page one story. Mexico has been visited by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama. The committees Congress have held a dozen hearings about the violence in Mexico and its implications. Former "drug Czar," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, has been peddling a paper warning that Mexico is in danger of becoming a "failed state."

What will happen in Mexico? The violence is going to have political consequences. Quite likely, in the next presidential election, in 2012, the exhaustion with the violence will lead to a rejection of President Calderon's PAN party, and the return to power of the PRI, the party that held power for 70 years. PRI is the party of institutional corruption, and likely to accommodate the drug trafficking gangs. The drug trafficking organizations are likely to form a genuine cartel -- an alliance of erstwhile competitors to fix prices and limit competition.

(The labeling of drug trafficking organizations as cartels was a journalistic/political creation for its alliterative power when paired with cocaine --hence the "Colombian cocaine cartels" of the 1980s. I vividly remember economist Peter Reuter speaking to the Senate International Drug Control Caucus in the early 1980s, and Senator Alphonse "Pothole" D'Amato (R-NY) scratching his head in befuddlement when Peter explained that the cocaine "cartels" were weak -- because they were ineffective in accomplishing the prime goal of a cartel which is keeping prices high and excluding competition.)

Creating a real drug cartel fulfills Mexico's opportunity to become a more peaceful staging ground to supply cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana to the United States, which will help rebuild the Mexican economy that is reeling from recession too.

Analyzing the three elements of Agar's trend theory all point toward the danger of a drug epidemic in the next few years.

Are we ready? Don't make me laugh.
In 2001, a Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs of the National Research Council issued a report, Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us.

"A wide spectrum of plausible approaches to the prevention of substance use exist in both theory and practice. The effectiveness of most of these approaches for reducing substance use is unknown because the research evidence is nonexistent or inconclusive. Some of the approaches for which we have no evidence of effectiveness include many popular control strategies, such as zero-tolerance policies, the use of security measures such as locker searches, and the presence of police in schools, as well as more innovative approaches that draw on advances in toxicology, molecular biology, genetics, and clinical medicine (e.g., parents' attempts to protect their children via increased use of home test kits to detect drug use, or active immunization of high-risk children with vaccine analogues)."

I often feel our prevention establishment resembles amber, encoded with the dinosaur DNA of prohibition exaggeration. I need to work more on this challenge.

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White House press briefing on marijuana legalization

The White House press corps gets after presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs about marijuana legalization.

Gibbs is utterly unprepared to discuss the issue intelligently. He alternates between making jokes and being dogmatic. He makes a poor impression.

It is painfully clear that as far as the crisis of violence in Mexico goes (or sending 17,000 more American service personnel to Afghanistan's opium poppy fields), the Obama press team has not thought about what the Administration is doing for the nation beyond the most painfully obvious jokes and cliches.

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Where is the crime? Where are the votes? Where are the ads?

Paul Krugman writes June 9 that Senator Obama's nomination indicates that America has changed enormously. In 1966 and 1968, fear about crime -- and "the associated fear that fair housing laws would let dangerous blacks move into white neighborhoods," says Krugman -- was a winning issue for the Republicans. Krugman adds, " I don’t think a politician today could get away with running the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad."

Krugman may be just too optimistic:
A conservative activist is attacking Obama as soft on crime, reports Richard B. Schmitt of the Los Angeles Times. Floyd Brown, the creator of the Willie Horton ad of 1988, has created exposeobama.com.

On June 9, the FBI released preliminary Uniform Crime Reports for 2007 that show violent crime was down 1.4 percent overall. But murder is up in small and mid-sized cities.

Some very disturbing research in Memphis, TN suggests that the strategy to free poor Blacks from the crime and dysfunction of housing projects is spreading crime to the formerly safe neighborhoods to which they move, according to reporting by Hannah Rosin in The Atlantic Monthly for July-August.

Ted Gest at Criminal Justice Journalists reports on the June 9 FBI release.

Violent, Property Crimes Down In 2007: FBI Preliminary Totals

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Reports of both violent and property crimes in the U.S. declined in 2007 from the previous year, the FBI said today. In a preliminary report, the bureau said the number of violent crimes declined by 1.4 percent from 2006, reversing two years of rising violent crime numbers. Property crimes were down 2.1 percent last year from the previous year. The largest declines were in vehicle theft, down 8.9 percent and in rape, down 4.3 percent and murder, down 2.7 percent, the Associated Press reports.

Murders were down in cities of more than 250,000, including a sharp 9.8 percent drop in cities of more than a million residents. Murders were up 3.7 percent in cities of 50,000 to 100,000, up 1.9 percent in cities of 100,000 to 250,000, and up 1.8 percent in cities under 10,000. Historically, murder trends began in the largest cities and moved over several years to smaller ones.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

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