I want a new drug
One that won’t make me sick
One that won’t make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick
I want a new drug
One that won’t hurt my head
One that won’t make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red
(Huey Lewis and the News)
God I miss getting high.
And drunk. And stoned. And wired. And Buzzed.
I miss getting wired and playing quarter poker for 36 hours straight.
I miss getting stoned at 8:00 AM on Sunday morning and watching cartoons.
I miss getting high and watching hockey on TV.
I miss doing a few lines and walking into a bar feeling like I was goddamn Richard Gere, Tom Cruise, and Superman all rolled into one.
I’ve done ‘em all. Anything I could swallow, smoke, snort, eat, or wear.
And there’s no way I’d still be doing them because if I kept doing what I was doing, I’d be the very first pajamahadeen live blogging the afterlife. (Might do wonders for my ecosystem rankings).
What brought this on was a pretty wild rant by Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days who was responding to a laughably naive NY Times Op-Ed by John Tierney on how interesting it would be to legalize drugs. And fun. And how much better off we’d be because the war on drugs isn’t working besides most drugs aren’t that bad for you they just seem that way and even if they are bad for you what the hell business of it is the government’s and just think we could go after all the murderers and rapists if they weren’t too busy busting teenagers for having a roach in the ashtray and yadayadayada…
In an over the top reaction, Bill Ardolino takes a few pounds of flesh off of Mr. Harrell:
What extra-special brand of scribal Tourette’s is required to author a screed like this?
I’d excerpt it, but I’m afraid that common internet obscenity filters would start to block my web site from large networks.
I may have to go back on my declaration that the lefties exclusively dominate the blogosphere’s nasty discourse, as avowed righty Harrell’s piece – in both its rhetorical style and illogical, absolutist, moonbat reasoning – is one of the most oddly harsh things I’ve read in quite some time.
The Tourette crack was uncalled for. Ardolino was correct in pointing out it was absolutist, illogical and nasty. But I think even Bill would recognize in that searing rant an emotionalism so irrational that Mr. Harrell would have been better off if he had not hit the “publish” button so soon. I know I’ve done something similar in the past. Thank God it passed under the blogosphere radar at the time. Jeff wasn’t as lucky.
As for Tierney’s column, it could have been worse. He could have said something really stupid like marijuana isn’t bad for you.
As someone clinically diagnosed as addicted to marijuana (Cannabis Dependent Syndrome or CDS) , I beg to differ. Anyone who says that marijuana isn’t a dangerous drug doesn’t know jack about it. It’s only been the last 25 years that serious scientific work has been done on marijuana and what they’re finding shows that people who say marijuana is harmless are idiots. The value of these studies is that they’ve disproved much of the early research that showed marijuana was as addictive as heroin, or caused irreversible brain damage, as well as studies that showed it to be harmless to the cognitive centers of the brain and completely non-addictive.
Marijuana can be a contributing factor to clinical depression, schizophrenia, and over production of serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood. Addiction can cause anxiety attacks, withdrawal symptoms, and loss of long term memory. To sum up, given the short and long term effects observed in the laboratory, heavy use of marijuana is about as bad as heavy use of alcohol, or amphetamines, or just about any other drug.
I describe the effects of marijuana because this is the drug that most of my libertarian friends throw in my face when talking about decriminalizing drug use. And while there may be some merit to the idea, as usual the libertarians are walking in the clouds while the rest of us have to exist here on planet earth.
Decriminalization would not rid us of the scourge of gang warfare over lucrative drug turf nor will it eliminate meth labs. It won’t stop the narco terrorists from funding Bin Laden or the Shining Path. And it won’t necessarily empty out the jails or unclog the courts because law enforcement will be free to go after anyone and everyone who deals the stuff.
All would be true unless you just want to go ahead and legalize the whole shebang. This would be absolutely fascinating to watch someone try and put into practice in the real world. In fact, it would be of such entertainment value that I would start a new humor blog just to write about the effort.
Because legalization would bring government into the previously illegal drug industry with both feet. And that’s something I would pay to watch.
Can you see the Feds negotiating with Peruvian drug lords for the best price on this year’s coca harvest? Or Afghan warlords for access to their poppy fields? Of course, there are limited supplies of both drugs grown for medicinal purposes but the expansion of fields and factories dedicated to satisfying market demand would be far bey0nd our present capability to meet. We’d have to deal with the thugs.
And the bidding war among the suits at Smith-Kline, Pfizer, Lilly, Baxter, and a whole host of pharmaceutical companies would be great theater.
It will never happen, of course. Most people have more sense than your average libertarian. Where the RINO’s are correct is in their critique of what the war on drugs has done to civil liberties and the madness in our criminal justice system. For that, the solution may in fact involve some form of decriminalization. Hell, if Bill Buckley can come out for decriminalization, how bad can it be?
The real problem with drug addiction is how to cure it. Currently, only some variation of the 12-step program initially used with alcoholics has proven even partially effective. There are some promising drugs in testing as I write this but even such a “magic bullet” does not address the underlying psychological issues that lead to addiction in the first place. Recidivism rates are astronomical for cocaine and heroin – approaching 95% after two years. That means that 95% of patients going through a treatment program will be using the drug 2 years later.
And part of that is a statistical problem. About 60% of the people receiving in-patient treatment aren’t there because they want to be, they’re in treatment because they had a choice to make between going into a hospital or going to jail. Crimes as various as domestic violence to attempted murder are taken off the court dockets by shuffling the perp off to a drug treatment center for a month. The only thing the perp is interested in is doing his time at the center, playing nice and trying to fool the counselors. I know because I’ve seen it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
This leaves no empty beds for the people who really do want to quit, who are personally motivated to get the monkey off their back. People who have hit bottom are ready to turn their lives around. If there are no beds available, the chances are next to nothing that the addict will succeed on their own.
The answer here is obvious; stop court ordered drug treatment. A much better place for an addict to quit is in jail – as long as we spend gobs of money on facilities that are combination treatment centers and prisons. As it stands now, drug treatment in prison is a national disgrace. Prison treatment centers are for the most part ineffective because they don’t segregate the patient from the general population. And clinical progress is not tied to the length of a prisoners sentence, a motivational aspect of prison drug treatment most professional advocate.
Then there’s the personal liberty issue. Here’s a good summation of the libertarian position:
Let me tell you where I stand. Drugs are bad, mmmkay. The biggest problem with drugs are not their long-term effects, but their near term effects. That is, people do things under the influence of drugs that they normally wouldn’t do. I have a problem with that.But, just because drugs are bad does not mean that they should be illegal. Stupid things that harm others ought to be illegal, not stupid things that harm yourself. And if the worst bads associated with drugs are when you do stupid things to others, then, well, we already have laws to cover those.
DUI, child abuse, etc.—all presently illegal, and rightly so.
The most common bads associated with drug use are not illegal nor should they be. Work absenteeism, poor relationship skills, and the most common one—stupid judgement in sexual relations—are all rightfully legal.
It’s an emotionally satisfying argument albeit one shot full of ethical loopholes and intellectual solipsism. The potential for harm to another human being as a result of drug abuse and addiction is not addressed satisfactorily. By saying that killing someone under the influence of crack cocaine is already covered under the criminal justice system – the extreme of what Dr. Shackleford is saying – and then say that society has no business taking the cocaine away from the murderer or keeping him from getting the drug in the first place is wrong.
Yes people who take drugs are only hurting themselves physically. But when they take a few other people down to the sewer with them – people who are completely innocent and wouldn’t ordinarily take the same fall as the druggie – then we have a problem. I can’t believe Dr. Shakleford and other libertarians are simply throwing up their hands and saying “tough luck” to those who find themselves in a situation where they’re dependent on an addict. That’s why I think there is a role for government in both interdiction and enforcement. A reduced role, yes. One cognizant of civil liberties yes. But a role nonetheless.
I tend to favor a more local solution. If someone is going to harm themselves by taking drugs, clearly we must get innocent bystanders out of the way. The problems associated with government taking away children from crack-addled parents are too numerous to go into here. Suffice it to say that the system is so broke that any additional stress could cause it to collapse altogether. The only way to fix it is to spend massive amounts of tax dollars as Children and Family Service Departments are woefully underfunded and understaffed nationwide. In a city like Chicago, it’s a disgrace.
Speaking from personal experience, taking drugs feels too good to stop for no reason. This is why we’re never going to “solve” the drug problem in any meaningful way. Decriminalizing drugs is not the answer. In fact, in my opinion it would be worse than what we have now because it simply doesn’t address the ancillary problems that drug addiction causes. It merely gives us the illusion that something is being done. From a civil libertarian standpoint, I buy the argument on a psychic level. But it’s a pointless intellectual exercise when children are starving to death because their mother spends money to feed her drug habit rather than her children.
6:55 pm
Scenes from the War on Drugs: post-traumatic stress syndrome (a performative)
Jeff Harrell: "You WANT me on that bong! You NEED me on that bong…!"* **** (h/t Bill; see also, Ace, Jawa, Mark Kleinman, JunkYard Blog) And of course, this, this, this, this, and this. **** update: Rusty weighs in with an argument I largel…
7:07 pm
Great post. We’d have to deal with the thugs, yes, or we’d have to compete with them. And that has a load of ridiculous implications as well.
Good luck in staying off the stuff.
7:15 pm
I think I made it pretty clear that before we drag out a cross and nail Mr. Harrell to it I’d like to see an explanation as to why he was, as you correctly point out, so vitriolic. Such an emotional rant could only come as a result of a personal experience with the beast. I hope it’s something you and your loved ones never have to deal with.
I read his second post and he seems in no mood to take anything back. Hence, while I still believe your reference to Tourette syndrome was over the top and uncalled for given the stigma society attaches to that disease and the pain you may cause someone who reads your remark who suffers from it, I will concede your main criticism that such threatening language is uncalled for and should be condemned.
7:25 pm
Hence, while I still believe your reference to Tourette syndrome was over the top and uncalled for given the stigma society attaches to that disease and the pain you may cause someone who reads your remark who suffers from it,
Tourette’s is a condition whereby an individual shouts out random obscenities that make little sense and are often quite particularly offensive. It is a PERFECT descriptive metaphor for Harrell’s odd, nasty rant. It is not intended to diminish or mock the suffering or situation of people that ACTUALLY have Tourette’s – I personally know one such person – and I think you’ll see that if you can pull your head out of your either “situationally politically correct” or “personally touched by a specific disease” bum.
Please enlighten me – what other diseases and conditions are we not allowed to reference as metaphorical comparisons? I’d be curious to see your list. Wheelchairs? Common cold? Bi-polar? Hangnail? Spare me.
Also, your forgiveness is once again hypocritical, as I haven’t heard of you trying to “get to the bottom” of any rants from Pandagon or the Daily Kos. I’ve seen people killed by drugs. You don’t have to look any farther than me. But that wouldn’t give me or anyone else the excuse to say that all people that use drugs should be slowly beaten to death in public. That’s so far beyond Kos, it’s astounding.
Get some perspective.
7:40 pm
But that wouldn’t give me or anyone else the excuse to say that all people that use drugs should be slowly beaten to death in public. That’s so far beyond Kos, it’s astounding.
Agreed. The “perspective” I wish you would grant Mr. Harrell is that something may have just happened in his personal life that caused him to shoot his mouth off.
This is different than a political rant against the President or conservatives. To get that worked up and fantasize about beating and killing people and at the same time have it come from a normally sane writer shows that there may be something else at work here.
As I said in the post, he never should have hit the publish button.
9:33 pm
John Barleycorn must die.
9:41 pm
OK, but if marijuana is bad and therefore should be illegal, why not make alcohol illegal, since it’s clearly worse?
Oops, we tried that. It’s time to admit it doesn’t make any more sense to do it for drugs. The consequences are the same: black markets, hugely profitable organized crime, general disruption of society greater than the drugs themselves could ever produce.
And that’s just in our country. In Colombia, at one point, half the Supreme Court and a good chunk of the legislature was assassinated. Imagine car bombs going off in DC, NY, and LA every couple days; that’s the nightmare they;ve lived. And all courtesy of American drug dollars, brought south by 100,000% profit margins created by our drug policies.
Prohibtion was bad enough, but at least it only hurt us. Is it really fair to destroy S American countries for the sake of our social morality experiment?
11:01 pm
A Rarely Discussed Issue With Legalized Drugs
My question is who is going to manufacture and distribute narcotics if they become legal? Ask the tobacco companies if warnings on the very package you buy is enough to keep you from facing public derision and the courts.
11:53 pm
The Drug War
Dr. Steven Taylor has a good post up over at PoliBlog. Think about the money and time decidated to stopping potheads and then think about whether we are really safer because less guys can get getting stoned. I've tried to make this point before. R…
12:13 am
Bill,
Touretts syndorme is not limited to uncontrollable obscenity laced diatribes. That is only the most cited but least common of symptoms. Small facial ticks are the most common, but can be so severe, in the form of uncontrollable muscle contractions, it can render a person unable to function. I knew such a boy in school, and his life was a living hell. He couldn’t walk, could barely talk and could not write. This man four years out of high school killed himself before drugs were available.
So Rick was quite right in distancing Mr. Harrell’s chosen remarks, to someone such as Antonio from my old high school. Your remark is just as insulting to those who suffer from this disease.
12:17 am
Andolino’s potty mouth is well known to anyone who reads his blog. He is the sole arbetier of what is acceptable and what is not. Anyone daring to disagree with his majesty risks the end of sacrements and exposure to his fury. Given his over the top reaction, which he does frequently depending on the issue, I’d bet you are dealing with a expert in both drug and alcohol abuse.
3:59 am
OK, but if marijuana is bad and therefore should be illegal, why not make alcohol illegal, since it’s clearly worse?
I say in the article that marijuana should be decriminalized. And alccohol is not “clearly worse.” Please read the post.
See Dubya has a good take on why it would be wrong to legalize other street drugs:
You can’t ban it all, of coursse, nor do we really want to. We can pick and choose among addictive substances—coffee and tobacco and liquor we’ll allow, ritalin and percodan we’ll allow for medical use but regulate pretty tightly, pot and heroin and meth, nope. Wouldn’t-be-prudent. Not worth it. We’ll tolerate a little drunkenness and alcoholism, a little edginess from caffeine, lung cancer and stained teeth from tobacco, but not the burned-out stoner or the psychotic meth nut. Just like the sun roof, that’s the package of costs we’re willing to incur and enforce. But just because we’re willing to tolerate that much addiction, hallucination, and drug-induced unreasonableness , doesn’t mean that we ought to tolerate more.
5:24 am
Chief of Black Helicopters
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … It’s Stop the ACLU Thursday
8:28 am
[...] heir mother spends money to feed her drug habit rather than her children. Cross Posted at Rightwing Nuthouse This entry was posted [...]
10:38 am
Cut to the chase: I’d rather be around a stoner than a drunk. I won’t go to professional sports because of the beer-laden morons drawn to those events.
You can argue the dangers of alcohol vs. MJ all day and not get anywhere. My real world observation is that drunks are more hostile, less in control, and downright a pain to be around.
The “burned out stoner” is no worse than the “ridden hard and put away wet” drinker, and in some ways, better.
10:41 am
I don’t argue the dangers of alcohol vs. marijuana. I say both are equally dangerous to one’s health when used in excess.
And I agree about who I’d rather be around.
12:33 pm
ACLU Wants All Drugs Legal
“The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes criminal prohibition of drugs. Not only is prohibition a proven failure as a drug control strategy, but it subjects otherwise lawabiding citizens to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment for wha…
12:36 pm
Nobody wants to hang out with a worthless stoner or obnoxious drunk, and that’s not the point. I agree with most of Nuthouse’s points, but disagree about the effect of legalization. I’m a state public defender, so I see the “war on drugs” in the trenches. We waste a tremendous amount of resources on jailing users. Now can we all agree that there are people who use both alcohol and drugs “responsibly” in the sense that they do not harm those around them and do nominal harm to themselves? I think we can.
There, I said it. I’ve used them all and they can destroy lives of users and innocents around them. Nuthouse’s comment about alcohol is well taken, why should we allow more debilitating substances in the world legally? Another excellent point. Right now someone is preparing a response to me with something like “My mother (sister,brother,father, best friend, etc.)was destroyed by Meth (coke, pot oxys, etc.)” Look dudes, this is 70% of my clientele. My officemate had all three of her sentencings this morning cancelled because all three guys failed pee tests.These losers couldn’t come to Court clean
! I know how awful drugs can be! But let me remind you that we are currently “at war” with drugs since Pres. Clinton. Today, ten years later, this office can’t complete one damn hearing because the guys are too stoned.
I would like to think more conservatives would also realize that drugs, like all comodities are market driven. Nuthouse’s point about the government dealing with Peruvian thugs is pretty good, but don’t you think that they are thugs because they deal only with thugs in the distribution system? The illegal distribution sytem now in operation won’t go away overnight, true, but by using law enforcemen resources against those in illegal distribution rather than illegal use would be a savings in terms of billions. Furthermore, if you could buy a drug legally as opposed to buying it illegally and facing a jail sentence for your efforts? Nuthouse is right, the illegals have too much invested to go away, but a huge percentage of their customers will disappear.
Now let me get my conservative bonafides back up in the picture: Drugs are bad
I’m not a libertarian who says “F—- the innocents”, really I’m not. I’m just a realist who says jail time for everbody like Harrell wants is foolish, way too expensive, and doesn’t work. Personally, I’m for legalizing all substances, FDA control and making all behaviors often credited to drug use (i.e. DUI, breaking and entering, forgery, or delivery of substances outside the system) should be punished harshly. It would work better than what we’ve got, and certainly couldn’t work any worse.
1:49 pm
[...] Blonde’s Garage
General11 Aug 2005 02:49 pm
Drugs
Lots of posts from lots of people on drugs, the drug war and if drugs are bad for you [...]
4:02 pm
Nobody wants to hang out with a worthless stoner…
But what about the not so worthless stoners like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman? (OK, bad examples, they would be boring to hang out with because they are deceased.) The point is not all pot users are dead ringers for Spicoli and there is a difference between use and abuse.
Oh, and does the phrase “Just say NO!” ring a bell? Methinks the Drug War might have predated Slick Willie by ten years or so. Ronnie Raygun gets full credit for this ridiculous charade, of course Slick Willie is guilty of not stopping it, as are the Bushes (senior and junior).
While on the topic of the obvious: Criminalizing drug use does tend to increase the correspondance between criminality and drug use. I remain unsurprised by this.
Cheers,
Naked Ape
6:18 pm
Thanks Naked Ape, for reminding me how deluded folks on the left can be on occasion. A little internet search would show you the history you evidently forgot. Nixon actually started the first real anti-drug legislation that in the “War on Drugs” vein in 1973. Reagan then started use of the term “War on Drugs” and Nancy got the typical first lady assignment and headed up the “Just say no” campaign. That idea stressed personal choice and individual responsiblity rather than stronger sentencing to stop drug use. I’m sure the terms personal choice and individual responsibility are confusing to a Clinton man.
Bill “Never inhaled” Clinton ran in 1992 and 1996 as the “War on Crime” president.During his term he greatly strengthened the sentencing guidelines and started “Zero tolerance” policies on many fronts, especially those drugs he was too ignorant to inhale. Between 1996 and 2001 General B. McCaffery was the nation’s drug Czar and took the incarceration of Americans (especially minorities)to a new extreme. I doubt you would want to be naked in one your prez’s prisons Naked Ape, they aren’t easy going places. Please check out the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice website for the history of the “Incarceration President” ( http://www.cjcj.org )
Lastly dude, please don’t try to impress me with aging (or dead) guys who liked to catch a buzz. I’m an aging guy who likes to catch a buzz,o.k. If you read my piece you might understand that the policies in place hurt people far more than a few joints. I’d advise you to relax, chill, and smoke a bone.
8:24 am
Just a little light reading that may enlighten some of the “statistics” constantly thrown about in the “War on” mindset where it concerns pretty much any of the “consensual crimes”.
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/toc.htm
Definitely worth a read and nicely covers the arguments, I think.
9:51 pm
It’s fascinating to watch the responses as someone’s favorite ox gets gored. We’ve heard from Jeff Harrell, who really, really doesn’t like drug use, or apparently users. We’ve heard from Bill who thinks Jeff is unstable. We’ve heard from various other personalities involved in drug use in various ways, some directly, some indirectly. Even those involved directly in drug use seem to be content to downplay potential hazards in favor of a more laissez-faire policy.
I am one of the 5 percent who recover for more than two years. I have abstained from drug (and alcohol) use for almost 19 years now. Abstention has become a habit; I no longer really crave mind-altering substances, or only rarely, usually under duress. I relapsed once, for about a week, a few months after I completed treatment (30-day inhouse). I do not believe that I have another recovery in me, so a second relapse is simply out of the question.
I started using marijuana, now reliably known to be a gateway drug, just as critics have been contending for years. It certainly was for me. The perceived need to alter reality is the real problem of drug use. Once you get a taste of mind-altering substances and like the effects, it is natural and almost inevitable to begin trying different ones.
I progressed from pot to hash to uppers to psychedelics to coke. I finally bottomed out on coke, just about the time that crack was coming into widespread use in suburban areas. Fortunately I went into treatment after only two marathon crack sessions.
I went into treatment to avoid losing my wife and my son. I stayed in treatment for myself, because you can’t do it for anybody else but yourself. We were told that out of a group of twenty, two people would stay clean for one year. I am one of those people. I do not know who the other one was.
The point of this lengthy introduction is to agree with Rick. We have enough legal substances that cause harm. These substances have been with us for centuries. The decisions to allow them into society openly have already been made. What we must ask ourselves is this: What benefit will mankind obtain from expanding this pantheon? What costs will be incurred for the perceived benefit?
I already know what the price is for a little recreation. Approximately two percent of the population are latent addicts, just waiting to get into the vicious circle of using. That’s 5.6 million people in this country. Who wants to give them carte blanche to begin to destroy themselves and their families, friends and loved ones? Do we really want to encourage that many people to engage in behavior that can be so detrimental to them? Do we?
10:03 pm
By the way, my cousin has Tourette’s Syndrome. She manifests it in a continuous series of snorts, grunts and whistles. She has been put on Haldol to control it. Needless to say, she uses as little medication as possible. This can be very unsettling upon meeting her.
She is a Montessori teacher, minoring in three subjects at a small college in Virginia. She wants to begin teaching drama in a Montessori setting. Her dream is to introduce children to drama as a way of connecting with each other, and with society as a whole. She wants to contribute to society by strengthening it at a local level, by building up it’s newest members.
Up yours, Bill.
2:34 pm
Chris stated: “I started using marijuana, now reliably known to be a gateway drug, just as critics have been contending for years.”
I would contend that it is not reliably known to be a gateway drug. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00280.x;jsessionid=opclFahk62oaWQPkqx?cookieSet=1&journalCode=add
Shows a paper concluding “our results demonstrate that the phenomena used to motivate belief in such an effect are consistent with an alternative simple, plausible common-factor model. No gateway effect is required to explain them.”
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/5/836
“Results. With the exception of higher drug use in San Francisco, we found strong similarities across both cities. We found no evidence to support claims that criminalization reduces use or that decriminalization increases use.
Conclusions. Drug policies may have less impact on cannabis use than is currently thought.”
And see for more:
http://www.drugscience.org/sfu/sfu_gateway.htm
While I agree that drug ABUSE is something that we, as a individual members of our society, should provide education and rehabilitative support for, I would argue taht having the government directly involved in the matter is of no use, and may, in fact, be more harmful to the cause.
Private and charitable organizations tend to be far more capable and successful at treating drug abuse than the government ever has been with prohibition laws.
I appreciate and greatly sympathize with your position, Chris, but you seem, to me, to be an example of why government involvement in prohibition is a failure. You were still pulled to the allure of drugs and fell to the consquences of drug abuse and addiction despite the government’s ban on the very substances you became addicted to. It is those factors of abuse and addiction that we need to address in order to facilitate helping our fellow human beings, not making the drugs illegal since that has never proven to be useful.