DOPE SQUABBLE

Updated December 26, 2007

President Bush and drug-war officials congratulated themselves lavishly at a Dec. 11 press conference Tuesday for reducing teenage drug use. “Communities are safer, families are stronger, and more children have the hope of a healthy and happy life,” Bush declared, praising his administration’s “progress” in cutting drug use among young people by 25% since 2001.

More junk from the administration that has presided over burgeoning drug disaster that menaces families, communities, and old and young people alike. Remember the last time teen drug use declined? From 1980 to 1992, major surveys such as Monitoring the Future and the National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health showed a major decline in teenage (and adult) drug use was 1980 through 1992. Teen drug use in the previous month fell from 39% in 1980 to 14% in 1992--the biggest drop ever recorded.

What happened during the same period surveys showed drug use dropping? The crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin epidemics erupted among all races across the country. Drug-related deaths soared from 7,900 in 1980 to 12,400 in 1992, drug-related murders tabulated by the FBI rose from 407 to 1,540, and drug-abuse hospital emergencies soared to a record 433,000.

Drug use surveys are meaningless, but they continue to receive obsessive attention because all sides exploit them with dishonest abandon. Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia, proving today's drug-policy reform groups can go toe to toe with drug warriors when it comes to preposterous falsehood, countered with "a figure that may be shocking: Among 10th-graders, 14.0% currently smoke cigarettes, while 14.2% smoke marijuana. That's right: Slightly more 10th-graders now smoke marijuana than cigarettes."

Kampia attributed the lower rate in teen smoking in the 2007 Monitoring the Future survey to the fact that:

Today, virtually any store that sells cigarettes posts a large, brightly colored sign saying, "Under 18, No Tobacco. We Card." Have you ever seen a marijuana dealer with a "We Card" sign? If we want to control teen access to marijuana, it's time to learn a lesson from our success with tobacco. Contrary to the mythology put out by Drug Czar John Walters and his ilk, the complete prohibition of marijuana for adults not only doesn't help to keep marijuana away from kids, but it actually hampers such efforts.

Kampia's conclusion" Regulation works." Just legalize marijuana for adults like we do tobacco, and teens won't be able to get pot--like they can't get cigarettes now--he declares.

Anyone who has studied the tobacco industry's "We Card" program has found it laughable, but let's stick to Kampia's own use of Monitoring the Future's 2007 survey. Because tobacco is legal for adults and regulated so kids can't get it, and marijuana is illegal for adults and kids can also get it illegally, Kampia says, teens smoke more weed than cigarettes.

Actually, the 2007 Monitoring the Future survey contains 11 different comparisons of teenage tobacco versus marijuana use. Kampia cites only one--10th graders' monthly use. What do the other 10 comparisons (see Tables 3-4, 11-14) show? Yes, just the opposite:

--Nearly four times more 8th graders smoke cigarettes on a daily basis than smoke pot; in fact, more 8th graders smoke half a pack a day of cigarettes than smoke pot daily at all.  They also smoke cigarettes more on a monthly basis than they do marijuana. Substantially more 8th graders say they find cigarettes "very easy or fairly easy to get" (56%) than marijuana (37%).

--Three times more 10th graders smoke cigarettes on a daily basis than smoke marijuana, and 10th graders also find cigarettes easy to get (78%) than marijuana (69%).

--More 12th graders smoke cigarettes on a daily (12%) and monthly (22%) basis than smoke marijuana (5% and 19%).

MPP ignored 10 measures from the same survey that sabotaged its case that "regulation works" to keep substances away from kids and cited the one case (barely) in its favor. What blatant subterfuge. MPP will say anything to win legal highs for grownups, including exploiting false images of teenagers and supporting arresting and imprisoning teens for the slightest pot use. What a pathetic, phony "drug reform" group.

Worse, neither MPP nor the drug czar has explained why surveys of teenage drug use matter at all. As the Centers for Disease Control has pointed out, the United States is now suffering an exploding epidemic of drug poisoning deaths (now our second leading cause of external mortality, behind only traffic crashes)--centered in middle-aged white men.

While eager to exploit drug use by teenagers and by minority groups, drug-war interests such as the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and Partnership for a Drug Free America, and groups seeking to reform drug policy such as the Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Policy Project, all shrink from discussing a drug crisis centered in white, middle-aged adults. 

Yet, ignoring that drug disaster and the even worse current one, drug-war officials and drug-reform lobbies swap Puritanical rhetoric over pencil-and-paper surveys. This is like saying, “Never mind that the plane crashed that killed 500 people. The important thing is, no children heard any profanities while the plane was going down.”